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February 18, 2008

Microsoft To Give Students Dev Software For Free

Michael Arrington

47 comments »

At a talk tomorrow at Stanford University, Bill Gates will announce that they are making much of their developer software free to college and university students. The program, called Microsoft DreamSpark, will be run by Joe Wilson, Senior Director of Academic Initiatives.

Covered software includes Visual Studio Professional Edition, XNA Game Studio, Expression Studio, SQL Server and Windows Server. Students were previously able to license this software at greatly reduced prices, or got access via their CS department at school (or through other, less legal, means). Now they’ll be able to get the software for free.

Only students in Belgium, China, Finland, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the U.K. and the U.S. will have access for now, other countries, and pre-college students, will be added later this year. Microsoft requires verification that you are an actual student - in the U.S. they are partnering with Journeyed, who maintains a database of students.

This is a smart (and obvious) move for Microsoft, who needs to get as many students as possible comfortable working on their platforms. It also signals that they recognize they have real competition (including open source alternatives) when it comes to IDEs and other developer tools.

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This entry was posted on Monday, February 18th, 2008 at 9:00 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  1. Technology Magazine

    February 19th, 2008 at 2:01 am

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    February 21st, 2008 at 3:59 pm

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  1. No Surprise

    February 18th, 2008 at 9:08 pm

    Michael,

    I think it also is clear indication that market forces driving openness is beginning to positively impact Microsoft’s business strategy. This, I think, is great overall for the development community, and technology in general.

    For the record, Bill Gates is also speaking at Carnegie Mellon on Thursday. Disclosure - i’m both a Carnegie Mellon and Berkeley alum is spurned Stanford twice! :-)

    Go Bears!

  2. No Surprise

    February 18th, 2008 at 9:08 pm

    … and clearly I can’t spell check! :-)

  3. Allen

    February 18th, 2008 at 9:10 pm

    What a great way to get people addicted to their products before entering the work force. Sounds like a good investment strategy.

    Allen Vartazarian
    Famesource.com - Claim your fame!
    http://www.famesource.com

  4. Allen

    February 18th, 2008 at 9:12 pm

    (@No Surprise)…btw, im also a Berkeley alum…go bears!

  5. Michael Arrington

    February 18th, 2008 at 9:24 pm

    Allen - Go Stanford.

  6. Cal EECS Guy

    February 18th, 2008 at 9:39 pm

    I went to Berkeley as an EECS major. We had access to all of Microsoft’s software, including Windows (XP, Mobile, Vista, etc) and they’re development software for free. Everything except Microsoft word (even other office products, like Visio and Publisher were free to us).

    Did Stanfurd really not always have this? Sheesh, weaksauce Michael…

  7. Kurtlar Vadisi

    February 18th, 2008 at 9:47 pm

    Smart move. Get people educated and experienced in their products so they can’t/won’t use anything else.

  8. Allen

    February 18th, 2008 at 9:47 pm

    haha…cmon Michael, where is the love! Your bio on here states “I started college at U.C. Berkeley”…you gotta stay true to your roots.

    But I guess you’re right, leland stanford JUNIOR university is pretty cool.

    ;)

  9. PeteC

    February 18th, 2008 at 9:50 pm

    Is this the same Joe Wilson that lied to comgress about yellow cake?…if so he can not be trusted with this task…

  10. Technical Guy

    February 18th, 2008 at 9:54 pm

    Michael, Microsoft has always done this. When they launched .NET back in 2001 (maybe 2002 … ), they gave out free copies of Windows XP and Visual Studio at SJSU and a few other schools, with free presentations about how to rapidly develop applications on their platform. They had a developer party with live music, free food, and Xbox giveaways, too. It was ironic, since SJSU was a Java/Sun shop and the teaching staff pretty much thumbed their nose at Redmond.

  11. jeremy

    February 18th, 2008 at 9:57 pm

    im not sure it will make a huge difference to students– they already use the express editions free of charge, and that is just fine for learning.

  12. Larry

    February 18th, 2008 at 10:26 pm

    And of course the schools, in turn, will build their curriculums around choice and experience in all platforms :P

  13. jordan

    February 18th, 2008 at 10:34 pm

    just goes to show you - pac -10 is the top collegiate conference in both academics and sports.

  14. Everett

    February 18th, 2008 at 10:36 pm

    @ 10 actually MS has donated software to high school and university labs for years! Wonder if Bill will be visiting Yahoo! since he’s down here ;)

  15. BloggingTom

    February 18th, 2008 at 10:36 pm

    Students in Switzerland are already able to download Microsoft software for free via academiczone.ch. Microsoft Switzerland has started this pilot project last december as i wrote in my blog (german).

  16. Tech For Novices

    February 18th, 2008 at 10:58 pm

    why no links to the ms press pass articles ?

  17. 17th

    February 18th, 2008 at 11:15 pm

    how do i get this software? (i am a student)

  18. sandeep

    February 18th, 2008 at 11:21 pm

    is it available to students worldwide

  19. Don Wilson

    February 18th, 2008 at 11:22 pm

    I fully intend on using these tools when made available.

  20. Mark

    February 19th, 2008 at 12:24 am

    In some Universities in Germany we have access throug the MSDNAA-Programm already since a few years.

  21. compsingh

    February 19th, 2008 at 12:57 am

    Microsoft had a program called the MSDNAA - MSDN Academic Alliance under which it distributes software free currently. It has been doing this since 2003 and not just in top tier, but other schools too. I even remember one professor and his research team recieving the code for file system mgmt module of windows.

  22. Technicle

    February 19th, 2008 at 1:24 am

    What else can Microsoft give? :-p

  23. Andrew Badera

    February 19th, 2008 at 1:39 am

    Excellent move for students. Blatant marketing move by Microsoft, but still, excellent move for students.

  24. Ben

    February 19th, 2008 at 2:18 am

    Berkeley students have been getting Microsoft software (including dev software AND windows) for free through MSDN Academic Alliance. This has been going on since 2003 …

  25. micfo.com

    February 19th, 2008 at 3:42 am

    This students could be their prospective clients in future, nice strategy!

  26. Suraj Luke

    February 19th, 2008 at 3:44 am

    I wonder if the students will ask him about the Yahoo! deal…

  27. sylv3rblade

    February 19th, 2008 at 3:45 am

    This is insane.. They shouldv’e done this years ago when I was still a student. =(

  28. James Gardiner

    February 19th, 2008 at 4:19 am

    This is a reaction to Adobe Flex/Air.
    Flex/AIR as a RIA (Rich Internet Application) technology is getting huge traction. It is also very open source related. This ground roots adoption of very powerful tools for future business apps is not good for future Microsoft domination of the corperate market.

    I for one hope students still go towards the open source type solutions. Open source solutions are the back bone of the biggest Internet companies and as we all know, Google and Yahoo, both killing Microsoft in online Apps are all based on open source.
    Microsoft has taken more then its fair dollar from the economy making it one of the biggest companies in the world with the richest man.
    Better to spend a little more effort (And less $$) in using open source tools and enriching the open source community and ultimatly everyone, rather then Microsoft.

    James

  29. Rick

    February 19th, 2008 at 4:56 am

    Euh, is this legal? IANAL, but aren’t there a number of laws against pushing out the competition by giving away your product for free or well below costs?

  30. John Smart

    February 19th, 2008 at 5:33 am

    While VS and SQL are great products, I think the “ease” of programming you see in the Guthrie-style videos is smoke and mirrors. Half the time, VS does something behind the covers automagicly to make things “easy,” but when it breaks, you’re left hunting through machine generated code hidden from the IDE because some PM didn’t think of that scenario.

    Lazy professors are going to succeed in generating script kiddies versed in the gospel of DataBinding and pre-packaged ASCX controls…

  31. John

    February 19th, 2008 at 5:42 am

    Microsoft has been doing this for some time and at many universities.

  32. Todd

    February 19th, 2008 at 6:16 am

    I don’t use Eclipse ( and the LAMP stack ) because its free, I use it because its the best and helps me do better work. Microsoft still doesn’t get it.

  33. Aaron Myers

    February 19th, 2008 at 6:43 am

    What’s the difference between this and Microsoft Academic Alliance? I can get on that site and download Windows XP Pro, Windows Vista Business, Express Web Studio, Windows 2000/2003 Server and a few of the Office 2007 applications - don’t see the difference.

  34. Peter Antypas

    February 19th, 2008 at 6:58 am

    I can’t believe that in this day and age companies still charge money for dev tools. Didn’t we kill that model some time in the 90s?

    Ultimately, I predict that both MS and Adobe will fail in this arena. And, btw, the next “web 2.0″ is mobile, not PC related.

  35. sales experience

    February 19th, 2008 at 7:01 am

    you’re right

  36. john

    February 19th, 2008 at 7:07 am

    The MSDNAA requires a subscription on your school’s part. At my technical college or roughly 60 IT students, I think the yearly fee is $500 to the college which completely opens the MSDNAA to students in turn.

  37. Anand Iyer

    February 19th, 2008 at 7:32 am

    Joe Wilson’s team has a video interview up with Bill Gates - http://microsoft.blognewschann.....-students/

    Enjoy,

    ai
    MS Evangelist

  38. ajadoniz

    February 19th, 2008 at 10:00 am

    Very smart of them to do, but they should have done this 3 years ago. This is going to have a huge impact in favor of MS when the war between them and openware heats up.

  39. Ish

    February 19th, 2008 at 11:11 am

    This is nothing new. When I went to CMU some time ago they offered Visual Studio 6 for free. Our professors still said that they would grade our assignments by compiling and running under UNIX. My advice to students is to stay away from Microsoft platforms while in school. Its a great time to pick up unix skills and tools. You can learn Microsoft later when you go to work if you need to.

  40. recep

    February 19th, 2008 at 2:22 pm

    Thats a very great news, will it be limited just in usa or whole countries will be included???

  41. Bob Braham

    February 19th, 2008 at 2:48 pm

    Microsoft continues to be a leader in winning the hearts and minds of the developer community. They’ve always set the pace that other platform companies seem to be chasing.

  42. whiskey

    February 19th, 2008 at 6:19 pm

    The first fix is always free! Then it hits you!

    Compare that to… the fix will always be free.

    Naah… Windows is a sinking boat anyways!

  43. Hawaii

    February 19th, 2008 at 7:21 pm

    That’s pretty cool of Microsoft to do.

  44. Harshal Vaidya

    February 19th, 2008 at 10:35 pm

    When these students develop commerically viable products they’ll need the MS platform to launch it. Will MS give them free too ? Like Open Source does. This sounds like an intelligent scam!

  45. Jeremy Steele

    February 20th, 2008 at 12:42 pm

    Smart idea, suck them in while they are young then slap them with a nice $10,000 bill with $1,000 in yearly licensing fees when they start a software company of their own. Smart.

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