Microsoft Corp. is giving students free access to its most sophisticated tools for writing software and making media-rich Web sites, a move that intensifies its competition with Adobe Systems Inc. and could challenge open source software’s popularity.
The Redmond-based software maker said late Monday it will let students download Visual Studio Professional Edition, a software development environment; Expression Studio, which includes graphic design and Web site and hybrid Web-desktop programming tools; and XNA Game Studio 2.0, a video game development program.
The company will also give away SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition and Windows Server Standard Edition.
Wow, shocking, yet expected. A LAMP setup is virtually cost free for budding developers, students, and web companies whilst Microsofts version of web servers comes with a price tag. We use both, and there are definately tradeoffs for each, but personally I prefer the security, speed and reliability of a LAMP based setup.
I feel this is just the start of things to come for the development world. While those with TechNet subscriptions can access and use Microsoft software for free, other development platforms such as ZendPHP, Coldfusion, and Ruby on Rails carry a four figure price tag (yes, ROR is free, but hosting it can be VERY expensive). The LAMP model (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) has been extremely popular for building websites due to its ease of use and compatibility with just about any machine. A lot of popular websites and web applications run on this technology (digg, wikipedia, wordpress, invision power boards). It seems that Microsoft finally acknowledges the fact that they cannot compete with this free package and is offering up their most coveted developer tools for free. What next, Windows?! (Please, really)
I hope that this creates a ripple effect among the corporations that provide these technologies. Honestly, I believe Adobe will also have to follow suit in the future to offer Coldfusion and Dreamweaver for free. Lets face it, Coldfusion is one of the LAST cost-based server languages in circulation. The wise business decision would be to follow suit and drop the price tag. While Coldfusion is a very robust, stable and capable development platform, a lot of developers and companies scoff at its price tag when basically everything else is free, same with ZendPHP. If Coldfusion were offered up for free it would see a lot more use in the open-source community where PHP and Ruby on Rails are definately king and anything else is a waste (to them).
I’ll check this out though. While I detest SQL Server and its sluggish style, Visual Studio is said to be a massive improvement in the last 2 years. Now that its free, its an IDE worth a look. Though text-based editors are still top dog.
Pete and I got a good laugh out of this though:
Gates said students will want to try Microsoft’s tools because they’re more powerful than the open-source combination of Linux-based operating systems, the Apache Web server, the MySQL database and the PHP scripting language used to make complex Web sites.
Keep dreaming Bill. We respect ya, just keep shit real.
Source: Wired
