World’s richest man to pitch free software program at one of wealthiest universities in country
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates will be appearing at Stanford this afternoon, where he’s expected to unveil “DreamSpark” — a 10-nation program that gives development software that would normally cost about $3,300 to high school and college students.
Analysts say the program will greatly benefit students, Microsoft and, possibly, society if more young people are exposed to programming opportunities at little cost. The Redmond giant also gains competitive price balance with open-source technologies such as Linux that are freely available and popular with student computer enthusiasts who may not be able to afford to purchase Microsoft products otherwise.
ZDnet’s Mary Jo Foley points out that this seems quite generous on Microsoft’s part, though many students already have access to these tools free through their universities.
I did not know Bill was Mexican.
Given a choice between Eclipse/GNU/Apache/Open Standards/Multiple platforms vs. DevStudio/MS Standards/Windows platforms, I think college students will be smart enough to choose wisely and correctly.
This is also for the tax write off? Claiming to “give away” $3,300 packages?
Microsoft has no real choice in this, if they didn’t give these programming tools away, Linux would grow ever faster, and Microsoft might eventually become irrelevant.
GaryM - I agree that the students will choose wisely, when given accurate information. I think with “DreamSpark” they will find best-in-class tools, delivered in a single download/DVD, with great integration, documentation and support.
I think they will find this to be a lot easier to use than a collection of “free” tools that actually cost *a lot* in time and frustration to collect, learn and integrate.
Maybe students count their time as free, too. But I doubt it.
Tom A, you’re wrong. I’m sure you are either paid by MS or you haven’t tried anything except MS stuff, otherwise you wouldn’t claim that.
Modern open source software is not harder to configure than Microsoft’s and once you’re familiar with it you can really do much more!
[I think with “DreamSpark” they will find best-in-class tools, delivered in a single download/DVD, with great integration, documentation and support.]
MS is assuming that young students are not intelligent enough to find these on their own…of course, MS is wrong. They are probably one step ahead of MS, developing their own tools, not only negating the need for MS, but for the tools as well.
JR
ok
MS need to do more innovation or else they will be left behind cos the market is relly very competitive.