I just got an invite to Bizspark from thefunded.com
“Microsoft® BizSpark™ is a global program designed to help accelerate the success of early stage startups by providing key resources “; basically free development software and a hook into a community of potential investors. A lot of the comments on techcrunch were of a religious nature, calling it a scam and wondering why you have to be sponsored by a VC (you don’t…) or have $1M in funding (you have to have < $1M…)
Excellence is driven by by open competition and sharing and from where I’m sitting – BizSpark is a good idea for entrepreneurs – as a serial entrepreneur (I’m on my 4th startup) and Open Source advocate – let’s try and stay objective and consider the following points:
- The entire top 10 on SF.net supports WIndows – even KDE is cross-platform for Windows and OS/X
- Never take a business decision with religious assumptions
- Before taking a platform decision – clear your mind and your desk. What was true about PHP 1 year ago is no longer valid – if you consider CakePHP and what was true about ASP 2 years is no longer valid if you look at the latest in .Net and Visual Studio. The developer tools in IE8 are outstanding but I would not discount Webkit either – it’s a question of what is your target platform among other things, not your religious beliefs.
- Choosing a development platform is pretty easy these days – download and start using it – don’t rely on third hand rumours – try it out yourself.
- Microsoft is above all a company driven by software developers and the competition with the OSS world has only been good for everyone
