[Wimpy]

Hi Everyone,

Microsoft is announcing a new program called WebsiteSpark which is "designed for independent web developers and web development companies that build web applications and web sites on behalf of others", in short: it provides with free software for independent web developers and small web development companies with less than 10 employees.

I just found this and though I had to share it with my fellow DIC's:
http://weblogs.asp.n...rk-program.aspx

/Wimpy

[PsychoCoder]

Moved to Industry News and featuring it. Nice find Wimpy

[X@MPP]

sounds cool

This post has been edited by X@MPP: 26 September 2009 - 10:40 AM

[born2c0de]

Awesome, I can use this to distribute VS08 to my project team (who weren't lucky enough to sign up for DreamSpark) to work on our final year project.

[Wimpy]

Nice! Thought it would be beneficial to someone!

It will cost a $100 though at the end of the three years:

Quote

there are no costs for the three years other than a $100 program fee at the end of the three years

born2c0de, on 26 Sep, 2009 - 09:10 PM, said:

Awesome, I can use this to distribute VS08 to my project team (who weren't lucky enough to sign up for DreamSpark) to work on our final year project.

[entri3]

Awesome thanks for sharing $100 is nothing compared to how much your business makes from these great programs

[Ostralis]

Sounds great, reminds me of DreamSpark, love that Microsoft-sponsored program as well.

[rgfirefly24]

I believe there is also a clause in there that says that if your business starts making over a certain amount of annual income then you must upgrade to a standard MSDN sub

[maffelu]

Well, if you actually start making money then you will probably want to purchase the software anyway in order to get better support and feat.

[CTphpnwb]

Maybe I'm missing something, but this sounds to me like yet another attempt by MS to circumvent internet standards and lock people into using their software. Are these sites going to be cross platform and work equally well on browsers other than IE, or is that still going to be an issue for developers to wrestle with?

[Core]

Well, considering the high quality of the products, I definitely agree with the fact that this will attract a number of web developers. I don't think of this as an attempt to circumvent Internet standards, rather promoting their development products.

There is no such thing as lock people into using their software simply because nobody forces developers to use these specific products

[CTphpnwb]

Core, on 11 Oct, 2009 - 02:34 PM, said:

There is no such thing as lock people into using their software simply because nobody forces developers to use these specific products

So then you don't think that there would be a cost to canceling your membership in three years? All that work could be easily moved to another system?

[MacAnimeGirl]

I signed up for this.

I'm a lone freelancer who has been looking for whatever way I could to legally get VS.

I was taught in ASP.NET and so I would prefer to use that, though I would like to learn some other programs too. Yay for diversity!

But I think this a great idea they had.

So the 100 is all you have to pay? I haven't even been able to make anything yet because it took so long for me to get the friggin software...

I still haven't been able to down load all the software they give you. So yeah...