matinae’s blog

Microsoft and Crack-Dealer Economics

Today, Microsoft posted a new interview on Channel 8 with Bill Gates regarding free software for students. Please note that I’ve not capitalized free software in the prior sentence, as Microsoft and Gates’ use of the term is likely to give Richard Stallman and the rest of the Free Software Foundation a collective aneurysm . The program is called Dreamspark, and through it, Microsoft plans to make available full versions of Visual Studio 2008, Expression Studio, Windows Server 2003 and the XNA Game Studio. All told, software that would cost me as a private consumer thousands of dollars to license. This isn’t completely new. As a student at Montana State University, I had access to Microsoft’s MSDN Academic Alliance, a progam by which students at select universities would be given free licenses to a variety of Microsoft softwares. While mostly targeting Computer Science students, MSDNAA made available consumer operating systems and software like Office. Dreamspark is interesting not because it’s new, but because it’s scope is unprecedented. Who can get this right now? We are kicking this off in 11 countries/regions, giving DreamSpark to millions of students in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, China, Germany, France, Finland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Belgium. If you are not residing in one of the countries listed keep checking back, we will be adding more countries throughout the year.A frighteningly large number of students being given expensive software gratis, so that they learn it, and gain familiarity that they’ll carry with them. It’s the ultimate in ‘first-hit-free’ marketing. Give it away when they’re just starting, get them hooked, take them to the cleaners later. Don’t get me wrong, Visual Studio is a fine toolset, but the Pro version retails for almost $800 US, and frankly, I’m not sure it’s worth that much. Particularly when looking at tools like MonoDevelop or SharpDevelop both of which are Free is all senses of the word and are a very powerful, capable IDEs.Microsoft has been shifting their business plan for the last several years. They’re migrating away from the importance of what most people considered to be their core-business, the Windows Operating System, and focusing more on Developers and Productivity Tools. Their Developer Tools are good, but they only work with Microsoft Systems, including databases, and they’re frighteningly expensive. Microsoft’s integrated Team System, a developers tool chest containing a lot of cool looking tools and integrated source management, costs nearly $10,000 per user. Yes, you can license sub-sets of the tools for individual users in the team, but Microsoft has completely priced themselves out of the medium-team market with this pricing. Not to mention, that you practically have to hire someone to install the system, as our Systems Administrator spent two weeks trying to install the system for evaluation before giving up on it.Microsoft knows that without Developers for their platforms, they will fail. Platforms work that way. It’s why the classic Mac OS was failing, and why Apple gives away XCode for Mac OS X. It’s why the Free Software community has spent so much time in the last decade developing powerful development tools to ease the process and use of the already powerful tool chains created the decade prior. And it’s why Microsoft offers the Visual Studio Express line. I understand what Microsoft is doing here. Universities across the globe tend to favor Free Software in their Computer Science programs. It’s cost-effective with no strings attached. It levels the playing field between all the students, without requiring that they all use University computers to do their work. I can think of only one course where we had to use windows for the course-work, and that was simply because we were doing x86 Assembly using
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