Anybody who knows me knows that I'm not a Microsoft fan... I'm an old-school "open source" guy who thinks of M$ as the "Evil Empire" and that Gates/Borg picture is still kinda how I picture gates.
And I think BizSpark is a great program. IF you are interested in running on the MS platform, or want to integrate with MS "stuff" you can't beat it. Enrollment is simple and painless, it lasts for 3 years, etc. It's one of the things that I'll happily "give the devil his due" for.
There I said something positive about Microsoft. Now I guess I need to go click some rosary beads and say 3 "Our Stallmans" and 5 "Hail Raymonds". :-)
You mention it in passing, but it's very important. "Integration" is hard when you never have a copy, BizSpark is at the least, a free windows testing vm, why make it harder to test on windows.
Yes, that was our main reason for joining BizSpark, to be honest. We're a "pure play open source" company and absolutely favor running on OSS / Free Software platforms, and we encourage people to fun our products on Linux, a BSD UNIX, etc. But, in real-life, Windows, Office, Exchange, Sharepoint, etc. are out there, close to ubiquitous, and sometimes you have to work with that stuff. So BizSpark is a great way to get your hands on all of the MS "stuff" for testing, integration, etc.
And I think BizSpark is a great program. IF you are interested in running on the MS platform, or want to integrate with MS "stuff" you can't beat it. Enrollment is simple and painless, it lasts for 3 years, etc. It's one of the things that I'll happily "give the devil his due" for.
There I said something positive about Microsoft. Now I guess I need to go click some rosary beads and say 3 "Our Stallmans" and 5 "Hail Raymonds". :-)