Microsoft's Biz Spark is Another Direct Shot at Open Source

by Sam Dean - Nov. 05, 2008Comments (6)

GigaOm has an interesting post up today on Microsoft's effort to woo startups and combat the open source movement. Its new BizSpark initiative is being rolled out in 82 countries, and offers many types of incentives to developers and startups. It also steers people toward Microsoft's products, though, and challenges open source in several ways.

In Microsoft's BizSpark program, startups will get a three-year Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) Professional subscription that will allow them to download Microsoft applications for building on Microsoft platforms. "Startups will also get free production licenses for application hosting and management servers, including Windows Server, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server, BizTalk Server and Systems Center and soon, Microsoft Dynamics CRM," reports GigaOm.

It is no secret that startups are very cost-conscious. Given the relative lack of cost-effective software solutions, they often tend to veer towards open source. In addition to being priced 'right', open source allows startups to maintain flexibility. Open source applications can be enhanced as desired, through access to the source code, where users are not locked into a proprietary solution. Microsoft understands the price-attraction of open source, and hence it is basically undercutting that advantage. Ultimately, this will be healthy for open source products as they will be forced to compete on value, beyond price.

Microsoft's BizSpark rings of the company's recent efforts to give free development tools to students in Norway. "Microsoft believes it has 'lost' a generation of developers who might have embraced Windows and .NET, thanks to the Mac and open source frameworks and operating systems," reported The Register in analyzing that news. Steve Ballmer himself pushed the effort to provide Visual Studio 2008, Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition, SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition, Microsoft Expression Studio, and XNA Studio 2.0 to the students for free.

Open source and the Mac are increasingly competitive platforms that Microsoft has to keep its eye on. Apple has been steadily gaining market share, and open source funding and development are still relatively healthy despite the gloomy market environment. Expect more of these efforts from Microsoft to steer developers and businesses toward its own platforms. Caveat (and user) emptor!

Microsoft

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by an anonymous user on Nov. 05, 2008

They have a few gratutious links to Open Source initiatives within Microsoft. Not sure how they will continue to play here.

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by MSFT Fan on Nov. 05, 2008

Looks like many of the 'have-beens' are using this approach to service/focus on the new blood.

Sun Startup Essentials: http://www.sun.com/emrkt/startupessentials/

Cisco Entrepreneur Institute: http://www.ciscoinstitute.net/

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by OssFoss on Nov. 05, 2008

The move is brilliant from Microsoft's perspective, but not so good news for companies who adopt it. Once you get locked in, you are trading a few bucks for dev tools that will not be easy to gut in the future, should you choose to do so.

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by an anonymous user on Nov. 16, 2008

Open Source is clearly a looser and there are very good reasons why it should be! Basically, all this Open Source movement is primarily nothing but a war against Microsoft, funded by other BIG company. In reality, Open Source are killing smaller product companies and specifically creating an entry barrier for new start-ups. OpenSource has not given a single genuinely good product so far other than FireFox and WikiPedia. Open Office is good at home, but is pretty useless for practical purposes.

In short, there is some sense coming back to the market. Open Source is not a natural movement and it does not deserve the kind of attention given in the media.

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by an anonymous user on Jun. 09, 2009

Anonymous, what about Linux? Why does no one really run a webserver on Windows (except one wants to spent a lot of money for the OS and the needed administrators). I know a lot firms like SAP, which use a a lot MS stuff and believe, MS fails fairly often!

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by an anonymous user on Sep. 28, 2011

Opensource has provided some good products, goto apache.org sometime. Killing smaller companies? Opensource has allowed smaller companies with limited funds to actually use technology. Linux, MySQL, Postgres, Apache, Tomcat, JBoss, etc.

With opensource, a teenager can freely download an Operating System, play around, write code, start a webserver, etc. Something that at one time was not possible without ALOT of $$$.

Now, don't get me wrong. OpenSource has it's downside, for every successful open source project, there are 1000's that just plain suck!

While I agree with the above poster, be careful with jumping into this program without looking at the licensing costs that will eventually hit ya...

Opensource you have to be wary as well. Like implementing software in your environment only to see it get stale, maintainers lose interest. Also keep in mind that maintainers of Opensource software have a bad habit of putting the code before the user. This doesn't happen (often) with the big stuff, but it does happen frequently with the smaller.

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