> I think a lot of the 'economic disparity' between developing LAMP apps and developing Microsoft apps is imagined and I think $999 a year for three team members is actually a pretty good deal.
In the commercial software development world, it's an amazingly good deal. It comes with a four-CPU license for both your web and DB servers, full copies of Visual Studio Professional, and a small pile of other tools that would easily breech the $333/year/developer mark... if you used Microsoft technologies.
I agree with the parent poster -- the wording and intent of this 'deal' are very, very different, and a bit insulting. But if you're already a Microsoft developer, it's still a hell of a deal.
Sure, it locks you in to their software stack in the future, but if you were an ASP.NET developer before WebSpark, it's not like this will change anything there.
What this does do, if you're a Microsoft developer, is let you take a chance at building a new company using your existing knowledge. Without having to shell out more than $100 to get all the software you might need. And I think that's a smart move for Microsoft.
What you're saying is that this is a good deal for people who are already locked into Microsoft technologies. Sorry, but that's still a bit like saying being punched in the face twice is better than being punched in the face four times - and I write this as someone with a background in web development using Microsoft technologies.
> What you're saying is that this is a good deal for people who are already locked into Microsoft technologies.
No, this is about new companies. If you prefer using Microsoft technologies (e.g. C# and LINQ, MS SQL, ASP.NET MVC) Microsoft would like to take economic considerations out of the equation for new companies (same as they do with BizSpark).
For the record one of the points I was trying to (perhaps badly) make in the post (it's from my blog) is that I don't think it takes the economic considerations out of the equation. When I talk to developers their economic consideration is on the deployment side not on the development side. I don't think most people care that much about the cost of their developer tools as much as they care about the Windows 2008 license they'll need for every server
Fair points but if you (instead of your clients) are hosting code you will probably want to look to see if you're eligible for the BizSpark program which does include server licences.
Microsoft is still going to make a fist full of money licensing the software that will have to run on the end customers production server. The $999 is only for development license.
Keep telling yourself that.