Saw this post on Slashdot about Microsoft making full versions of some of their developer tools available to students for free.
The following software is included:
- Visual Studio Professional Edition, a software development environment
- Expression Studio, graphic design and Web site
- XNA Game Studio 2.0, a video game development program.
- Windows Server Standard Edition
- SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition
In the press release they specifically mention competing with Adobe and open source software.
I know this topic has come up recently in discussions concerning ColdFusion IDEs. It will be interesting to see which way Adobe is going to go. Do you give it away like Microsoft in hopes that people will become hooked? Or do you charge and hope people will pay for features?
With more and more powerful software becoming available for free (Eclipse, JDevelop, etc) it will be interesting to see how ‘traditional’ software companies like Microsoft and Adobe stay in the game.
