free microsoft is still microsoft...

Because Scandinavians really have trouble getting hold of free MS stuff as it is!

The first and any subsequent hit of delicious pies on Ballmer will almost certainly be part of a free of charge public service.

Nothing to do with Open Source getting a bit more exposure by EU governments then..

Déjà vu.

Again, Microsoft uses drug-lord tactics to pursue their next generation of addicts.

Bill Gates has boasted about how those free (and pirated) products can effectively lock students and developing markets into Microsoft's proprietary tools and formats: "As long as they are going to 'steal' it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."

As noted by Con Zymaris, CEO of Cybersource, "This strategy is even more insidious, as Microsoft is expecting governments to pay for the hardware, thus paving the way for Microsoft to snare its next billion addicts in a friction-free manner.

"What is equally apparent is that Microsoft would prefer to lose money initially, to prevent competitors from capturing mindshare."

Review the Cybersource press release (2007) about Microsoft "free" meal-deals for students...

http://tinyurl.com/4z2wkt

what will these "lost souls" run this free software on? Windows is not on the list, and the free software advocates i know do not run windows, period. Does it run under wine?

"...Microsoft's rumbustious chief executive will next week announce the latest extension of a program offering Microsoft software worth thousands of dollars at a price point no student can refuse: free...."

i beg to differ. i would need to be paid to use microsoft's junk. so free is still far too expensive

SDKs usually are, they want you developing for their platform. Any way, we've heard it all before and know it well, the young are huge targets for companies, the business tactic being give it away free or almost free so that a dependence forms later in life, like drugs as Telic pointed out. But of course they don't make those free options available later on, so they form exclusivity agreements with educational institutions, making the cheap price only available to them and no one else. It's a shame this card hasn't been forceably removed from their hand as having to make a product and it's price available to everyone and barring exclusivity deals as anti-competitive would give MS a huge blow while giving competition a huge boost.

...and all governments should care about more competition for their consumers. That is, if their governments truly are for their citizens.

Crack dealers also give the first dose away for free. How else do they get you hooked. Then by your dependency you are manipulated and they own you.

@Steve Sherlock

You're exaclty right. Anyone who wants to learn those languages and technologies using the expensive IDEs and can't afford it can just take a hop, skip and jump to some places on the internet and get it, and more, for free anyway. And forgive me if I'm wrong, but don't they offer the express editions of the visual studio components for students for free anyway?

"Nothing to do with Open Source getting a bit more exposure by EU governments then.."

Interesting, yes? Norway isn't part of the EU.

Linux, because Norwegian students can get that for free as well.

I see the world "PEST" displayed rather prominently below Ballmer

I would have expected them to already start PAYING developers to use their tools. They must actually be feeling the pressure from OSS tools then.

That's the beauty of using OSS tools; even if you develop on a windows platform now, it's easy to switch to another platform with little or no hassle. So instead of being a skilled 'windows developer' using tools that only work on windows, developing window based apps, you actually add value to your skill set beyond just the MS platform.

Wouldn't want to waste disk space downloading their proprietary tools, even if they were paying me to download it.

Like dealers giving a free hit to kids, or cigarette companies selling single cigarettes in Africa.

Get them started young and you'll have them for life, regardless of the health hazards or how expensive it is to maintain the habit.

Our college promoted the 'DreamSpark' software in our school, until someone (me) pointed out that the college needed to provide authentication. That killed the idea stone dead for all of the students.

I use it, cause its free! Sure, Visual Studio 2008 may be the jewel in the crown, but the expressions studio is pretty nice software aswell. Soon Vista server is going up, but I'll avoid that, and it generally has a fair bit of nice software that will help students learn.

Because all students can get hold of exactly the same software, without having to pay hundreds of pounds, it makes teaching them that little bit easier, my college still uses Borland C++ to teach the students C, the only way we can get hold of that is for one of the friendly students to let us "borrow" his CD, not really a good learning environment.

On the bright side, we don't use Mac's, so at least we're not stuck with a sucky excuse for a computer.

They've been doing this for many years - I remember getting Visual Studio 6 (complete with NT 4 Server, SQL Server and the other bits) as a student (here in the UK) along with a beta of Visual Studio .Net, back when those were the latest versions out there.

Did it work? Well, in addition to Linux and Solaris hosted websites I do develop software for Windows (and the Mac) ... in Java. That would be a no, then.

Right now, I can just grab the developer tools for most of the common platforms and languages with nothing more than a web search or two. The biggest difference, from my perspective, is that if I want anything more than the most basic tools for Microsoft's platforms, I either have to go to dodgy sites or extract a pile of cash from someone first - for other platforms, it's a straightforward download. No messing around with Crippled Edition with Bits Missing, product keys etc.

Even Microsoft themselves ended up posting what amounts to a "crack" for the free Express Edition, since they had gone too far in crippling it before release!

With programs like this, the free 'Express Edition', giving small software companies five licenses for MSDN Universal for £200/yr etc, it's obvious MS can see there's a problem here - the question is, are they prepared to go far enough to deal with it? So far: no.

i got all of those apps listed for free (well the uni picked up the license i guess) when i was a student

server 2k3 is usefull to have especially as god knows how many places use it, and chances are that the majority of graduating students first job will be windows centric., i mean why trust a newb with a proper server when all they know is windows, although i guess you could argue a larger majority of them will be familiar with ubuntu, but thats still substanitially different from redhat or suse. For an IDE vs2008 aint bad, pretty slick interface, and intellisense certainly is damn good at what it does, admitadly there is a lot of crap i personally will never use in it and its only good for .net, but its an IDE for .net so thats to be expected. Personally i find the competition to be playing enough of a catchup game with it to not bother in terms of interface. think open office vs office 2003, on paper they do the same thing, but the office 2003 interface just worked better. (ironically now i use OpenOffice in preferance to office2007 but thats a different story)

Also dont forget the vast majority of students dont want to use there brains, there content with wizards and stuff, so telling them use eclipse, down load the <insert random extension name here>, and faff with the config till it works isnt an option. seriously in some of the java modules i took there were students who by the end of the module were struggling with command line compilation, and had to use jbuilder, never mind that the fact that they were single file programs with maybe a single library import, so unless file structure, and working with gui-less interfaces becomes part of their curriculum many of the 'better' alternatives havnt got a snowball in hells chance of uptake

Also dont forget that uni's are tailoring there courses for what employers are looking for, OSS is still mostly comprised of hobby projects (and probably always will be) employers may be asking for 'experience with OSS' but that doesnt mean there ethos is OpenSource its more likely to be an economic one, wanting people to wrangle the code to there own ends, and being able to pick up a project written by someone else without reinventing the wheel. Besides its all well and good developers knowing that there is much better tools available, but unless you can get management to buy into the alternatives you will find the decision has been made for you and it will be one they feel most comfortable with, with a company/technology they have heard of M$. Even if you ignore the issues of managemnt, and the uni's tailoring there courses for employers, you cannot escape the fact that the majority of desktops will be windows based so the focus will always be on MS.

personally for me i use notepad++ for everything apart from .net work, if MS wants to give its software to students so what its hardly an unfair advantage they are already trained in the ways of the BSOD, if the OSS world wanted to make a change it would target primary and secondary schools and get them young.

"The hardcore FOSS crowd want you to buy into their ideology, so they give you free stuff, MS want your dollars, so they give you free stuff. So what's the difference ? We get to choose between extortion or brainwashing, if you choose frame it in such extreme terms."

What nonsense! Nobody is asking for any ideological devotion when you download Free Software (to use the most ideologically loaded term of them all) - you can even produce proprietary software with Free Software developer tools. The only restrictions, when those tools are made available under a copyleft-style licence, are that you make the sources available when sharing the software with others. When did Microsoft last let anyone share the bulk of their software catalogue?

It's pure distortion to label as "brainwashing" a particular choice of licensing on the part of developers, especially when it actually encourages awareness of software licensing amongst users so that they know that it isn't as simple as "I got it without paying anything from [the man/my mates/bloke down the pub] - delete where necessary". If anything the brainwashing comes from those organisations who indiscriminately label content redistribution as "piracy" and who would rather Free Software went away.

All students studying any IT related subject in a Norwegian Technical High School (this is university level not A level) or university have had access to all the relevant MS tools for nothing for years. I studied C# by internet with Hist (Høyskole i Sør Trøndelag) several years ago and had access not only to the VS2005 cds but also full versions of XP.

I still used SharpDevelop for most of the exercises.