… Having washed my hands…

Let’s start!

If you’re running a web business, and if you’re looking for ways to save money by getting cheap software, here’s a deal for you. Microsoft is offering startups their operating systems and development tools, as well as production licensing for hosted solutions. All of that for a mere hundred bucks.

Oh, and you have to pay that hundred bucks when you exit the program.

The startup program is called BizSpark.

Where’s the catch?

First of all, only privately held software development companies are eligible for the program. Small print tells you that you have to be developing your own product or a service that will form a core of your business. Next: your company has to be in business less than 3 years, and have less than X dollars in annual revenue. The X is different for different countries: for US it’s a $1,000,000, for China – $750,000, for Greece, Korea, Malaysia, Poland, Russia, Spain and Ukraine – $500,000, for Egypt, Pakistan, Thailand, Turkey and Vietnam – $250,000. If your company is in a country that’s not on the list, consider yourself lucky, because your revenue has to be less than $1,000,000. So far, so good, right?

The real catch is here: you must be also developing a new “software as a service” solution… on any platform. That’s right, you may be as well running on a LAMP stack, using Ruby on Rails, or programming in Django – you are still eligible. Why is that? I am not sure. I am guessing Microsoft just wants to increase awareness of their development tools, without pointing a gun at anyone’s head – I am not a lawyer, but I couldn’t find any catches in the contract. It looks like in the end you don’t even have to develop a web solution using their technology. This seems fair to me, considering there’s a bunch of free options to choose from (think: a multitude of Linux distributions). Also – if I’m working on a website, I have to make sure that it looks fine in Internet Explorer, and I can’t get it for my Mac or my favorite Linux distro, right?

A Microsoft employee has been contacted and asked about this program. So far, my interpretation has been confirmed by him.

My experience with BizSpark

I enrolled in the program a couple of weeks ago, and I am using software I downloaded from MSDN. The registration process is very simple – you have to find a “network partner”, you have to contact him providing basic information about your company and confirming that you’re eligible for the program. The partner sends you a registration link, which you use to create your account. A couple of hours later you may enjoy your MSDN subscription (operating systems, Office system, development tools, Expression tools, SQL Server, and others).

Exiting the program

Three years after registration, or when your annual revenue exceeds X dollars (see above), you automatically exit the program. You will be sent an invoice for $100.00, and will lose access to MSDN downloads. If you’d be using BizSpark production licenses, you’d have to switch to another type of license (buy the software you need, or go with SPLA). Frankly, it shouldn’t be very hard when your revenue exceeds X. If I understand correctly, your operating system, office and development licenses will still be valid.

What about game development?

For some reason at first it didn’t click in my mind that this software could be used to develop an online game (e.e.: Internet RPG, Internet RTS, Internet FPS) or a game that has online elements (e.g.: a client to puzzles downloaded from the net, or a game with a shared online high-score board).