Microsoft to Give Free Software to Startups | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft to Give Free Software to Startups

eweek.com

36 pointsksvs41 comments

Microsoft is acting in its best interests. By giving away that software, it means that those startups might use it rather than Linux. So, when they become larger, Microsoft gets money from them.

As someone who works at a non-profit, we get Microsoft stuff for next to nothing. It means that everyone who comes through our IT department gets familiar with MS stuff and prevents FOSS from getting as much of a foothold due to cost concerns.

I understand your viewpoint, but at some point you have to realize that some applications would simply be easier/better to create on this stack. If you're stuck in a Windows company looking to create a startup on the web, the barriers to entry just dropped dramatically. I can't say I like it, but it's still going to help grow the industry and lead (hopefully) to more startups and better products.

Except a lot of internet software has second-rate installations and support for Win32.

Like RMS said, its like giving free packs of cigarettes to children till they get addicted. And then its done. Why don't people recognize the evil?

Because unlike cigarettes nobody dies, and a company (thankfully) has the right to make money.

It is hard to make a simil with addiction without having other connotations. Microsoft is a platform made on purpose to be incompatible with anything else and actively trying to keep you hooked and paying. That is the point, not death.

My father died from BSOD, you insensitive clod!

and a company (thankfully) has the right to make money.

That you actually have to point this out on a site largely populated by people running startups is pretty sad.

That's actually the only place you'd have to point this out.

He doesn't have to point it out. RMS' issue isn't that Microsoft make money. It's the way in which they make it.

Similarly, I support and enjoy capitalism yet that doesn't mean I support Rockefeller murdering his competitors.

Dreams die.

Because it is not evil. Microsoft offers quality software for a good price, and the total cost of ownership is not that high.

What I like about Microsoft is, that even if it's a mammoth and are not able to innovate as quickly as Google for example, they are still able to improve their software and iterate towards a useful set of products.

I beg to differ, their software is not quality and not a good price in the long run.

  * Microsoft products are a nightmare to maintain, just one thing to show is the amount of reboots
    required for most updates, including just applications or services.
  * IE is a nightmare not just for users but for web developers, they destroy everybody else's
    standardization attempts.
  * IIS is another standards and performance nightmare, and they killed all other commercial competitors
    with a dirty war of licensing and hard limiting their software (Workstation vs. server) by undocumented
    configuration.
  * Outlook/Exchange are incompatible with almost anything out there. [Edit: and some of their worse in performance!]
  * Microsoft Office is not just incompatible, but Microsoft actively sabotages any attempt by third
    parties to make a standard (last month half of the Office Open XML board quit in protest.) They did
    similar strategies on the undocumented OS services dirty war back in the 90s.
  * SQL server is also hard to move out of and is horrible in performance for similar tests compared to
    open source solutions (Oracle being even slower doesn't prove it is good.)
  * Their security record is one of the worst in the industry for the big players, several famous
    researchers stopped informing them altogether. (There are a few exceptions here and there, like DNS
    earlier this year.)
  * They push draconian DRM systems and the darker side of Trusted Computing, where you completely lose
    control of your own hardware and a big brother organization will be able to limit and
    potentially spy on you without your authorization or even your knowledge.

This can go on for several more pages.

http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/1999/11/16/microsoft_serve... http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081003-norwegian-stan...

And on the other side, their technology works like nothing else.

Windows hosts AD which talks to IIS and Exchange attributes are in AD and your file permissions are linked to AD user accounts and you can query it with LDAP which means your RADIUS devices can talk to it and your Certificate Server links with your domain, and your workstations access shared folders on the network which mirror files over WAN links using DFS which is AD integrated also, as is DNS which links with DHCP, machines are locked down by group policies which apply even on laptops, Exchange supports ActiveSync to Windows Mobile which has SQL Server Compact which can sync to SQL Server Express for your desktop and SQL Server for your main server which is monitored by MOM and running on HyperV and Virtual Server, and SQL Server Enterprise for your cluster, which has AD integrated permissions and is running on Windows Datacenter edition hosting a site on ASP.Net which serves to desktops using ClickOnce which builds into IE which is rolled out by WSUS which sits on Windows Internal Database which reports using SQL Server Reporting Services which is published in your Sharepoint site which handles your Excel spreadsheets with Excel Calculation Services along with your documentation which is all searchable through Search Server Express which is SQL Server backed and understands Windows file and website permissions, as do documents in Office when you use Office DRM to say who can change them and track versions and you can see if people are online when typing their names as they turn into smart tags which link with Office Live Communicator so you can IM people and SIP call them and email them which will be tracked in CRM using the plugin to Outlook which you're accessing as a published app from a terminal server connected by a windows integrated VPN through an AD integrated ISA server ... and the whole glorious lot is variously scriptable with COM, WMI, vbscript, VB for Applications, and plugins developed with Microsoft Visual Studio.Net and person-decades of documentation.

One Microsoft Way is right enough. No other software ecosystem is anything like the same scale or as usefully well integrated, from a business POV.

Linux on the desktop is almost laughable in how far from the Microsoft business reality it is. Every little annoyance, horrible error message or instability is worth putting up with because of the integration of ... everything.

And it's so cheap, too. All it costs is your company's soul in proprietary data format hell. Forever. But look on the bright side - few people even realise their company has a data soul, and it's not like there's any choice.

There is choice for startups and Microsoft is losing it, this new action shows that. Specially server side and web services.

lol - your supporting material is a salon.com article? Wow. Just wow.

I really think Adobe should start doing the same now, why don't they understand most of its users can't afford $700 softwares.

The fundamental difference is that Adobe has no competitors who are better. Many people use Linux and various other languages/frameworks not just because they're free, but because they think they are better for what they're doing. That's not true of most Adobe products (except maybe Premier and InDesign).

Adobe doesn't have to deal with this. Some people might use GIMP, but just to save a couple bucks. I don't know if there are even substantial competitors to Illustrator. There are weak ones to Acrobat and Flash.

Adobe really just doesn't have open source competitors with any shot of eating their lunch. Microsoft does.

From my experience I can tell that it's almost always possible to find better alternatives for Microsoft products and technologies. It seems like the only people who use MS stuff are those who don't care about what they have at hand.

Or those for which it would cost a substantial amount of time (and therefore money) to learn a new stack of technologies when they can use existing skills to build stuff more quickly.

Learning new things always costs time and money, it's called an investment and in the case of getting off the MS stack, it's well worth it.

For some. You're over generalizing here.

Let's say you have $200 a month to spend on email and collaboration. You have no IT staff, no programmers, and you have no IT experience of your own. What is better than (hosted) Sharepoint + Exchange?

If you are in that amount of money you are better off with Google Apps free hosting. One day of Exchange expert for setup or problems is in the hundreds.

Google Apps isn't even close to being better than Office+Exchange+Sharepoint. You can get hosted Exchange and Sharepoint for $15/user/month, with no setup fees.

I need an alternative LDAP directory with an integrated Kerberos Key Distribution Center and a modern usable user interface. Any ideas?

well we all kinda saw this comin... the problem is that the people who read this site and others like it are not starting up companies based on .net and other microsoft technologies. companies nowadays start in the basement, garage, grad school project with zero funding and no software costs.

beyond the economy of it all there is the cool factor. microsoft is just not cool and all the cool kids play with the cool toys like ruby, python, erlang, memcached and on and on. this creates a neat little ecosystem of interconnected like minded people who chat with each other on irc and twitter.

the only coolish tech that i see from microsoft is silverlight... but guess what? the backend for any forward facing silverlight app will most likely be done with non microsoft tech :)

Maybe this will change, since nowadays one can develop for free using Visual Studio 2008 Express Edition + .net and MSDN.

With the BizSpark program, you can skip the Express Edition and go right to Pro or even Team System

Why don't they let the computing industry grow?. $$$$ means everything to M$SFT. It irritated me so much with they offered XP back on the OPLC laptops. How lame. They want small children to use their lame software, so that the children don't even turn to the open source community. It sucks.

And then they even offer M$SFT office for students at 91% off the price.

My problem with running XP on OLPC is that XP doesn't come with anything even half-useful to someone who may or may not speak English in a developing country.

OLPC's software was for learning and working that was language agnostic (mostly, as far as I could see) and offering stimulating applications for developing minds.

What the fk does XP come with? Minesweeper? Notepad? Fk nothing! I hate to swear but damn XP is so useless to _anyone_ new to computers out of the box.

So I care that the kids don't get the OLPC learning and fun stuff. This is why I can't bring myself to recommend to anyone of my friends that they get a computer with XP for their toddlers, coz there is fk nothing for them to do on it.

An OLPC for a toddler in any country would be useful on the other hand... Man this makes me angry (if you can't tell) :)

The title here is definitely misleading. Is Microsoft just giving away the GNU userland on cd? Now, that'd be newsworthy!

(/sarcasm. yes, I'm aware "free" here refers to the price of Microsoft's proprietary software)

I bet PG would sign up for this program for Viaweb if he had to start it these days!

What should we get?

This is a great question.

You know what would be helpful? Discounts on Office, One Note, Project, and some of the other tools to run our business. We use Google Docs and 37signals products and the like instead of some of the great MS Office tools - isn't this the franchise MSFT needs to protect more?

Stuff for us to build the site - that's less attractive since we want to explode and we won't be buying Windows Server licenses any time soon.

Problem for MSFT is that only startups need the stuff they're making free; all small businesses are looking for free Office alternatives.

Am I reading this wrong? It seems like it includes that:

"All the software included in the Microsoft® Visual Studio® Team System Team Suite (VSTS) with MSDN® Premium subscription" http://www.microsoftstartupzone.com/BizSpark/Pages/What_Do_I...

"In addition to Developer tools and licenses limited to Development & Test, MSDN subscribers may also install and use one copy of Microsoft Office for any purpose." http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/aa718661.aspx#...

You are wrong. Small businesses want to use MS office because that is what they know. I've signed two companies up for Office Live Small Business, which isn't great, but it is somewhat workable. They will move to SharePoint Online + Exchange Online in a few months. It is only going to cost them $15/month/user. They are saving thousands of dollars and they get to use the same software they've always used. Importantly, that they are saving tons of $100/hr IT admin fees and they are saving thousands of dollars in hardware costs.

$15/month/user for Exchange+SharePoint is not significantly more than the $0/month/user for Google Docs for most businesses. The cost of Windows and Office is insignificant for them--compared to normal business expenses and the cost of the computers to run the software, the software itself is basically free.

Foldershare is a really, really nice utility. Windows 7's transparent WebDAV/SMB caching feature is going to be a killer. Right now, the biggest problem with cloud storage is performance, reliability, and disconnected operation. These tools make those problems go away, mostly, for the average user.

I learned all of this doing due diligence for a SaaS business that never got off the ground--there was no way I could be better than Sharepoint+Exchange, and there's no way that I could be cheaper in a profitable manner. The best I could hope for would be to build something similar to what MS is doing and then hope that one of their competitors bought it to catch up--not exactly the most exciting idea to me.

i say we all hold off on this offer until they sweeten the pot a bit more.

What more do you want?!

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