Microsoft To Shut Down TechNet Subscription Service 280
otaku244 writes "Since 1998, Microsoft TechNet has been a mainstay for all system developers attached to the Microsoft platform, given the ease of access to almost every product the company has produced. Unfortunately, the days of a cheap, unlimited Microsoft development stack are coming to an end."
This is mostly outdated service (Score:4, Interesting)
Combine that with subscription based Office and you have little reason to get TechNet.
Re:This is mostly outdated service (Score:5, Informative)
Some of us like to create test labs that will outlast the 30-180 day expiration date associated with MS evaluation periods (such as with SQL Server or BizTalk). An MSDN susbscription is more expensive than TechNet by the order of several magnitude.
I'm not sure what's going on with MS these days. They release a monstrosity of a desktop OS (Win8), a sub-par hermaphrodite laptop/tablet to go with it (Surface), and they are now giving their loyal developers the finger.
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So an MSDN subscription is either 19900 or 29900 dollars? Since when?
Re:This is mostly outdated service (Score:5, Informative)
Here in New Zealand, MSDN Ultimate is $26,369.00.
Better to fly first-class to the U.S. and pick one up for half the price. Understandably we're a little sour about it!
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And over here in Debian land we just type apt-get install build-essential.
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Ouch !!! [microsoft.com]
Though we also get screwed here in Australia.
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It was promoted by the anti-war outfits of the political Left
Wrong. It was also promoted by libertarians and classic liberals, who, last I checked, are in the right, the political compass notwithstanding.
But you're right that it wasn't because of the oil directly. It was because of the currency used to buy oil: the US dollar. Most of USA's prosperity comes from having made a deal with oil-producing countries so that they'd only accept the US dollar. This forces every other country in the world to obtain US dollars for their oil-purchasing needs. And they can only get
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Yes, my bad. I left out a zero.
Re:This is mostly outdated service (Score:5, Funny)
Actually *several* orders of magnitude would make it at least $199,000 or $299,000.
This is slashdot, we use base 2, not base 10.
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This is slashdot, we use base 2, not base 10.
What is this mysterious "2" you speak of? ;)
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I would like to call BS... For here is my question, what else are you buying from Microsoft? Can we get a list of that, and how much you are paying? My point is that Microsoft gets you one way or the other. They don't give you MSDN for 400/year/developer without you giving a good blood letting somewhere else.
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There's this thing called 'Google', it's a search engine. It pulls together a wealth of knowledge and allows you to 'search' through it, often in the time it takes you to type a reply to a comment in Slashdot.
Here's an example URL showing MSDN prices that I found from 'Google':
http://msdn.microsoft.com/subscriptions/buy.aspx
If you visit that 'link' and change the country code to 'New Zealand' it will bring up prices.
Visual Studio Ultimate with MSDN is $26,369.00
United states price is $13,299.00, which is ar
Re:This is mostly outdated service (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure what's going on with MS these days. They release a monstrosity of a desktop OS (Win8), a sub-par hermaphrodite laptop/tablet to go with it (Surface), and they are now giving their loyal developers the finger.
The cynic in me thinks that Microsoft knows its desktop monopoly is becoming steadily less lucrative, so they want to squeeze out every last penny while they can. We all know that for years, many users got Technet subscriptions and ignored the "for testing only" proviso, instead using them as cheap installs for self, friends, and family. When Microsoft cared about desktop market share, this didn't bother them much, since they'd rather people use their software (even at low cost) instead of going to a competitor. Now, however, they have delusions of being a "device and service company" and want to cut the desktop loose. It's absurd, of course (the desktop is the only area that MS has any kind of real advantage over its competitors) but it is what Steve Ballmer thinks.
Re:This is mostly outdated service (Score:5, Insightful)
The change in Technet doesn't affect me personally (as I'm a developer), but I'm at a life change right now and I need to change and update my programming skills. The question is, what should I be looking to do with my life?
When Microsoft pulls stunts like this, I take notice and I know I'm not the only one. Why would I want to invest my time and money into a sinking ship? I have 20 to 25 more years of development before I retire and right now I'm a .NET developer. C# is a pretty good language, but Microsoft is screwing up so much else, I don't really see how businesses are going to continue to support Microsoft. When those businesses drop Microsoft, it's going to go fast and my ability to get and keep a good paying job will go with it.
Microsoft, are you listening? Technet doesn't affect me directly, but I see this. You know that whole thing with Windows 8.0 and 8.1 and the no-start menu? That affected me and I started changing he advice I gave to people. Then there are the things that do affect me greatly. I called you a few months ago when I was investigating possibilities for my future and you gave me shitty advice because your own people couldn't figure out your own licensing. A word of warning: You have really big problems. You think you hide your issues from us? Tell us things are ok? Lie to us? Tell us that "Metro" which can only hog the whole screen is really a good thing? Think again. We can see your failures and piece together what is really going on behind your closed doors. We can smell how sick your company is and its really repugnant. People like me determine in the workforce which languages and operating systems to use. We play around with this stuff at work and at home. You really think you're going to squeeze us with UEFI and Technet? Your company is dying and we the tech people know it and we're going to start whispering that to our bosses and quietly switching away from you. You are not safe. The momentum is shifting and when it really gets going in the other direction you won't be able to stop it. You still have time to fix this, but you're being brain-dead stupid. Start listening to us because we sure as hell are listening and watching you.
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Been there, done that, and got the new IDE...
Since you are a Microsoft developer you are probably earning money right now. (Don't diss me as saying that with other stuff you can't earn money.) This means you want to get into something that probably has an established marketplace and established income.
1) Java, or anything related to Java. This is the little engine that could. Whether you are doing Scala, Java, Groovy, or Spring, etc. This little environment just keeps on going. I program these days for the
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Real developers know that technet was bascially the exact same information available on their website, on a DVD. It also didn't include any developer tools at all (No OS's, No SDKs, No Visual Studio, No Sharepoint, etc.) The fact that most people just look it up online rather than putting in a disk today (and have for years) is why Technet is dead.
Also real developers know that UEFI is a good thing and has nothing to do with any kind of lock in. You may not like secure boot, which is tin foil hattery of a
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Do you know what the biggest indicator will be that they are not going to rely on the Desktop OS to be the cash cow?
If they release Office for Android.
If they do that then they will be admiting that Office is where they're going to make money and the OS will just be a secondary operation. The reason they are scared as crap to release Office on multiple platforms isn't because they can't do it, it's because they are scared of migration when Corporate Robots learn they aren't stuck with Windows to use their
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I think MS is shooting themselves in their own foot by canning Technet.
Instead, for the same stuff, MS demands I pay $6119.00 with a $2569.00 renewal each year? That pretty much cuts out anyone but businesses.
Microsoft needs developers and people versed in their offerings. Even though VS is not involved, cutting them off like this is not going to help with the paucity of apps for their device platforms. Instead of killing Technet, MS needs to actually expand it, so they can expand the Windows Phone ecosy
Re:This is mostly outdated service (Score:5, Informative)
TechNet was never for developers. It was for sys admins/IT professionals.
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i guess MS no longer needs sys admins and IT professionals to support their products.
Re:This is mostly outdated service (Score:5, Insightful)
i guess MS no longer needs sys admins and IT professionals to support their products.
They want Enterprises to move to Azure and the Microsoft cloud.
On-Premise deployments of software are in the process of being phased out.
Microsoft has planned obsolescence for Windows IT professionals
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im a uni student and get msdn-like access to microsoft software, and have even had access to vmware software (mainly workstation, but that was pretty handy)
i like to run servers in a whitebox vmware esxi server for testing things, sometimes just to learn, sometimes because the IT consulting company i work for doesnt have anything i can test in before i do things at a client, and there are times where i am looking to make a chance that might cause a lot of problems if i cant do some quick testing first. with
Re:This is mostly outdated service (Score:5, Funny)
...a sub-par hermaphrodite laptop/tablet to go with it (Surface)...
They knew people were going to say it could go fuck itself... so this is really a time saving feature...
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counterfeiting != piracy
The unauthorised copying and distribution of copyright works is exactly what the term means, and has done so since at least the 17th century. I am sure you old-timers who predate this usage probably still complain about this. Frankly, you would serve the planet better if, instead of your pendantry over this one use of this word, that you shared the secret of your longevity.
Re:This is mostly outdated service (Score:4, Funny)
We are! The key is to use words in a certain way. You just won't listen, and that is why you keep dying. It is heartbreaking, really.
Re:This is mostly outdated service (Score:5, Informative)
They release a monstrosity of a desktop OS (Win8), a sub-par hermaphrodite laptop/tablet to go with it (Surface), and they are now giving their loyal developers the finger.
Technet subscriptions are not allowed to be used for software development and testing purposes per the EULA.
Technet subscriptions are for IT administrators, training, evaluation, and proof of concept.
MSDN subscriptions are for development, testing, and demonstration, per the EULA, and not allowed to be used for training/evaluation.
I wonder if they are just going to combine the two?
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Here you go, a free copy of Visual Studio 2012 Express: http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/eng/downloads#d-2012-express [microsoft.com] that includes all the MSDN information.
SQL Server, why not develop on either SQL Express or SQL Compact, both are free as well.
Making websites, no new signups, but you could have gotten Windows 7, SQL Server, Windows Server, Visual Studio 2012 Premium, and MSDN for free here for two years: http://www.microsoft.com/web/websitespark/webpro/ [microsoft.com]
Re:This is mostly outdated service (Score:5, Informative)
MSDN subscriptions are at least 3x the cost of a TechNet subscription. The point of the TechNet was that you were not a developer, you were an integration tester.
Re:This is mostly outdated service (Score:5, Insightful)
This.
From TFA it sounds like they're moving more to a 'you only need it for X number of days to do that sort of integration testing, or you can buy one license if you need more time'. If you need a lot of time and a lot of licenses to build an application that's what MSDN is for.
Ultimately it's just a way to raise the price. Fair enough, if you think the price is too low on your product you're free to raise it and see if the market adjusts. I can see the problem they were getting into as more and more people were probably buying a technet license for their home family offices and parents and that sort of thing, which was costing MS money. I think they probably realized that when they dropped the price of Office Home and student people were.. well, willing to actually buy it. Rather than all these stupid deals where you got it through an employer or through school or the like (or you just pirated it). This way, you go into a store, you pay your money and you go home with it. No special program arrangements on MS end etc. Technet is/was a tremendously good deal, it was quasi legit enough that they couldn't justify trying to enforce the license, and that's the problem. Most of those people will continue to pay, so MS will try and charge them more money for it.
Re:This is mostly outdated service (Score:5, Insightful)
It's patently obvious you have NEVER had a TechNet subscription -- especially if you think all there is to it is Office and a light version of VS.
This is a serious drag, especially for contractors/consultants, small shops, and MS developers of all kinds
Re:This is mostly outdated service (Score:5, Informative)
This is a serious drag, especially for contractors/consultants, small shops, and MS developers of all kinds
This. I set up an entire lab where I used to work using TechNet, mirroring the production environment so we could test MS Updates and other software updates before we let them loose on the corporate desktops. We even used it to test the changes the developers would port from their dev systems before we put them on the production systems.
When I left that company, I used my own TechNet subscription to test deployments before I would go to a client site. I kept up on my skills and learned new ones using the subscription, even doing an entire MS Dynamics deployment on my network at home before installing it for a client. My TecnNet subscription added value to my work. I will be looking for some sort of replacement, because I know I the value it gave me. I just think Microsoft doesn't realize the value of letting a consultant learn their products in depth at their own pace.
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I've had a Technet subscription for for years now, and honestly have only used it for cheap access to Office and Win X licenses. Yeah, once in a while I'll need to do an install of something like Exchange for testing before deployment, but that's not why I kept renewing.
The fact is, MS products are really expensive. I used to pirate them because the costs were so high. When I started a business, and found out about Technet, I jumped on the chance to "go legit" without going broke (morally, more than tech
Re:This is mostly outdated service (Score:5, Informative)
Visual Studio and other products have free versions now, so TechNet subscription is mostly outdated service. Visual Studio Express is the same great product that the full version of Visual Studio is, but is great for beginners. Visual Studio as a whole is a great product too. And, MSDN subscription is there too.
Visual Studio 2013 Preview [microsoft.com] just came out of the oven, too.
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There are a crap ton of features missing from the free version of vs.
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Visual Studio and other products have free versions now, so TechNet subscription is mostly outdated service. Visual Studio Express is the same great product that the full version of Visual Studio is, but is great for beginners. Visual Studio as a whole is a great product too. And, MSDN subscription is there too. Combine that with subscription based Office and you have little reason to get TechNet.
You mean other than the fact that it costs considerably more for the MSDN subscription to get the same level of service. I went and looked at their free technet downloads and found the selection lacking, considerably. They only put in the main products so if I want to practice with MDT, MDOP, or any number of other smaller expansion packs I have to go with a much more expensive MSDN subscription. That complaint is secondary only to the fact that I can't do anything complicated with what is available because
Re:This is mostly outdated service (Score:4, Insightful)
Translation: "I have no clue what Technet does".
Visual studio? Try virtually every Microsoft product ever created, available for download and legal for running without further licensing so long as you use them for intentionally-vague "development" purposes.
Bad move all around, Microsoft. On the one hand, I don't really care, because I have the last 15 or so years worth of physically mailed MSDN discs, and if you cared about selling from your back-catalog, you'd still offer XP for retail. On the other hand - You want me giving the latest and greatest version of your toys a spin, because what amuses me to write my next internal app for today, my company will pick up a few hundred thousand in licenses to legally deploy it next year.
But hey, just keep pushing Win8 and the cloud, and pulling stunts like this, and then wonder why no one seems to write apps for your platforms anymore.
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Visual studio? Try virtually every Microsoft product ever created, available for download and legal for running without further licensing so long as you use them for intentionally-vague "development" purposes.
I believe the product you are thinking of is called MSDN Ultimate. Technet doesn't even include Visual studio, because Technet is not for use in an application development environment!
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Did you read the article? Here is what was said:
"Unfortunately, the days of a cheap, unlimited Microsoft development stack are coming to an end."
First, Visual Studio Express is not a development environment. It is a toy environment to attempt to learn how to program. Yes yes I can write some "sophisticated" code. However, let's compare this to other IDE's like Eclipse, NetBeans or Idea Community edition. I am not trying to start an IDE war. I am pointing out regardless of the mentioned IDE's their base func
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You didn't pay enough.
Re:This is mostly outdated service (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: This is mostly outdated service (Score:5, Informative)
The NSA-provided SELinux patches are optional, were added in version 2.6 of the kernel and yes, they have been thoroughly vetted by a number of different organisations.
There's no such thing as zero possibility, so no, not absolutely sure. But it's close.
On the other hand, it's proven that Microsoft is a collaborator. My choice is clear.
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Visual Studio Express is the same great product that the full version of Visual Studio is, but is great for beginners.
This sounds great until you read the license agreement where it says that it is illegal to use Visual Studio Express for commercial purposes..
This is not true. There is no restriction for using VS Express editions for commercial development.
A monumentally bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
This has got be the third dumbest idea Microsoft has had in the last decade (Windows 8.0 and the f*cking the start button in Windows 8.1 being the first two). Microsoft Technet was a relatively cheap way for people that made a career out of Microsoft products to get their products for a reasonable price.
This allowed for two very important things, first it allowed for the ecosystem to be license compliant which made it easier to stay in the habit of being license compliant while at work work. The second thing it did was allow workers exposure to products to gain access for skills development. Workers that have exposure to products tends to push for the products that they are familiar with at work.
It's all about the ecosystem, and TechNet was absolutely brilliant for supporting the ecosystem of workers that support their products in the work place. Sure, you can follow their suggestion to switch over to the much more expensive MSDN subscription, but for most workers that is simply too expensive for a personal salary. Microsoft is shooting themselves in the foot for exploitation of the very people the very workers that make their success possible to begin with in the first place.
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I think what they're trying to do is move people over to the evaluations, which is really what TechNet was *supposed* to be for. Sure, the license keys you got with it allowed you to "indefinitely evaluate" their software (in a lab environment, or whatever), but with some trials lasting as long as half a year, it's kind of become redundant.
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Not really. Not if you have several projects over the next few years and don't want to have to set up your Server 2012 domain over and over and over again...
One of the things they will probably fix one day, is if you're content with a notification experience and/or (with some of the OSes) a reboot every 24 hours, you can probably evaluate for longer by not activating, or by ignoring the expiration
Re:A monumentally bad idea (Score:5, Interesting)
This has got be the third dumbest idea Microsoft has had in the last decade
Hey, as someone who competes against proprietary solutions (including Microsoft) with Free Software solutions, I wholeheartedly endorse this change!
What I frequently see is businesses that hire a developer to code a solution, and that developer has Technet, so he chooses whatever technology he thinks is best on there, and then when the customer gets ready to deploy it, they find a chain of Microsoft dependencies that all need licensing and CAL's, and often get roped into a software maintenance agreement for 5+digits over their initial cost estimate. Often it gets big enough to require new hardware and a virtualization solution too.
I get "second-opinion" work from them, but it's often too late to do anything else. I've heard of some (that I don't work with) who 'just get Technet' too.
If there's a silver lining, it's that I often get first-crack at the next project. But either way, this is a great decision on Microsoft's part as far as I'm concerned!
Re:A monumentally bad idea (Score:5, Interesting)
It is a way to turn a quick buck and show the shareholders that MS can make money with something other than XBox. Let us look at the long list of garbage shareholders are dealing with at MS.
Windows Phone is a dud, Windows 8 was simply horrible and I'm not sure if they can make it work. They keep pumping money into advertising, and people keep pulling out the old MAC vs. PC commercial telling them how stupid that tactic was and still is.
Server is still losing market share to Linux and Desktops are losing market share to tablets, phones, and MAC computers. It was never a boom town, but Exchange and Outlook was cheaper than Lotus Notes so people went that route.
IIS never saw huge adoption, but the reduced server footprint means that more webapp servers are moving to something other than MS products. Office and other productivity software has been stagnant for over a decade.
Bing is still a joke, and as with Windows 8 they keep paying people to tell you how good it is when we all see what the search engine market looks like.
So this is a way of them screwing people in order to turn a quick buck. Even if it shoots their own foot off, they don't care. I have two words for people thinking that they do care, which is "Windows 8".
All in all, I believe that this is a good thing! While it has taken a long time for justice to happen, and the failure of the US Justice system to make happen, Capitalism is killing off a monopoly all on it's own. It's going to be a slow and painful death, but a well deserved one. It also shows that a corrupt justice system just makes things worse! If they would have done their job in the first place and chunked them up like AT&T, they might still be thriving as several separate companies. (I emphasize the "might" there because it is a rhetorical fallacy to make a claim.)
Herding all devs over to Azure (Score:5, Interesting)
Rod Trent over at http://windowsitpro.com/windows/dead-microsoft-technet [windowsitpro.com] speculates on the TechNet shutdown that "...in a Cloud world, this makes a lot of sense. Those wanting to test new software can simply spin-up a Microsoft Azure-hosted VM, completely configured for the application they want to try-out or through the use of TechNet Virtual Labs. These days, using Microsoft Azure, a testing lab can be setup and running in minutes with just a mouse click."
Plausible, but risky if/when devs don't like it.
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If you don't mind your dev code out in the cloud. What could possibly go wrong?
Look on the plus side. The NSA will be able to let you know whether you have any serious bugs.
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This allowed for two very important things, first it allowed for the ecosystem to be license compliant which made it easier to stay in the habit of being license compliant while at work work. The second thing it did was allow workers exposure to products to gain access for skills development. Workers that have exposure to products tends to push for the products that they are familiar with at work.
I probably already mentioned it, but the Cynic in me tells me Microsoft maybe wants fewer people having a
They're shooting themselves in the foot (Score:5, Interesting)
So at the end of the day, what Microsoft will see is less money from me when I turn to other sources to get the MS software I need for testing purposes. I know guys at other companies with MSDN universal subscriptions and they're happy to share their login info.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They're shooting themselves in the foot (Score:4, Interesting)
They're doing something similar with MSDN, now to get a couple of new toys you need to get the Premium edition (which is 5x the cost of Professional). eg. To get TFS, you can have Professional... but to get all the features like the code review stuff they've been heavily plugging, you need Premium.
I think its just a ploy to squeeze more revenue out of us all, without us noticing until its too late.
Captain obvious strikes... (Score:5, Interesting)
For an annual subscription fee of a few hundred dollars, subscribers get the right to download virtually all of the desktop and server software Microsoft sells, with multiple product keys. The software is licensed for evaluation purposes only, but that restriction is part of the license agreement and not enforced in the software itself.
Could it be they're trying to cut pirating / abuse as a business entity to raise license sales? Nah, it's a conspiracy to spite the users.. ya that's it.
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Pirating will happen anyway, and MSFT of all software companies knows (or knew) how to benefit from "market chumming".
Seems they forgot how Office 97 slaughtered the competition by being so convenient to copy from the CDs borrowed from work.
I want to see MSFT screw users good and hard because I don't care for the company. Large hardware dongles keyed to each application would be just dandy.
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Could it be they're trying to cut pirating / abuse as a business entity to raise license sales? Nah, it's a conspiracy to spite the users.. ya that's it.
Of course they don't intend to spite the users - nobody running a company ever puts fucking over their users as a business goal. It's disingenuous to suggest otherwise.
The problem happens when they forget to include "not fucking over users" as a business goal and so they end up doing just that as a side-effect of otherwise well-intentioned decisions.
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I'm sure they acknowledge that they're going to lose some users over this. However, from a business POV the users they're losing are bottom tier for them, so they are indicating that they're losing more from piracy and unlicensed production use from this program than what they're gaining from the users.
A few bad apples don't spoil the bunch, but when most of them are rotten, you throw it away right?
It's also unreasonable to expect a commercial publicly traded business to continue all programs forever, thei
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A few bad apples don't spoil the bunch, but when most of them are rotten, you throw it away right?`
You are not using that metaphor correctly, pretty much completely backwards.
The saying is, âoeeven a few bad apples will quickly ruin the whole barrel.â
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I was an MSDN subscriber for 11 years. I wrote applications for many clients that were Microsoft based, and those clients spent significant sums on licenses for their servers, CALs, etc.
Over the years though it got harder and harder to justify the cost of MSDN, especially as they did all these things to restrict availability of product keys, etc.
I decided not to renew my MSDN subscription. I only have one client left using a MS stack, and they will be migrated to a Linux / Java solution shortly. They wil
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NOW piracy is a problem?
Bit late in the game tisn't it?
No, something else is up and I think it is the gradual decline of Microsoft as we are seeing defensive moves all across the board to make any sort of profit.
I am not sure how people on Slashdot feel about the cloud, but the idea of allowing a third party company store all of your private and critical data for your organization is like out of some sort of 1984 B movie knock off from Hollywood.
So a cloud substitute won't work for trying out Microsoft soft
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Right... they look at how much they're making on technet, and then look at a estimate of how much they may be losing when the test environment becomes the production environment and licenses aren't upgraded. When B is greater than A, the program gets cut.
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so the person that was going to "steal" licenses by using a test enviro, is now not going to download a hacked version. seems logical and reasonable.
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When B is greater than A, the program gets cut.
That's Phase I. For Phase II, depending on their estimates, they might (or might not) start exercising their right to a physical audit of technet subscribers to identify potential compliance issues.
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the loss monies from xbone debacle is forcing some marketing genius to force "upgrade" the technet subscription to msdn.
Gotta hate equally. (Score:3)
Thanks for remembering us, Microsoft!
Whatever happened to... (Score:4, Insightful)
"Developers! Developers! Developers!" I guess that with their obsession of trying to be everything Apple, they've decided to abandon everything that made Microsoft successful. Is the management team just panicking and throwing crap at the wall to see what sticks?
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TechNet wasn't for developers as it didn't include things like Visual Studio.
shooting self in foot? (Score:3)
> Unfortunately, the days of a cheap, unlimited Microsoft development stack are coming to an end.
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With Android, iOS, and Web development taking center stage these days, that decrease in Microsoft development is already well under way.
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With Android, iOS, and Web development taking center stage these days, that decrease in Microsoft development is already well under way.
Exactly. So this would be a perfect time to eliminate your cheap, unlimited development stack.
If you were trying to commit corporate suicide.
Moron Alert! Moron Alert! (Score:2)
(Or, What can a clueless Microsoft management fuck up this week?)
Microsoft wants to cut down on piracy of its development tools.
All Java developement tools are free.
SharpDevelop is free.
Any questions?
Microsoft doesn't want to be bothered... (Score:2)
...with the OS or the language platform anymore. Not enough long term profit in it. They want to be a sort of Cloud/HP/Apple. They want to be a smartphone/tablet and internet based business services vendor and that's it. There's apparently just not enough profit in the OS or supporting application developers.
Why don't they just admit it so we can all move on? Linux awaits.
Re:Microsoft doesn't want to be bothered... (Score:4, Interesting)
Microsoft doesn't want to be bothered with the OS or the language platform anymore. Not enough long term profit in it. They want to be a sort of Cloud/HP/Apple. They want to be a smartphone/tablet and internet based business services vendor and that's it. There's apparently just not enough profit in the OS or supporting application developers.
It's clear that this is what Ballmer is thinking (he's recently on record as saying that he wants MS to become a "device and services company"), but it really doesn't make any damn sense.
When it comes to cloud services and portable devices, MS is actually pretty late to the game, with nothing particularly special to offer. And their brand name is actually a negative – even people who like MS products often don't like their business practices, and many people only use MS because they more or less have to.
I use Windows at home because it's what I am used to (I've been using it since Win95), and because some of the software I want to run is only available for Windows. My workplace uses Windows, Office, and a variety of other MS technologies in part because it's an industry standard, but also largely because of legacy lock-in: much of the third-party software we use is Windows-only, we have to work with existing Office documents all the time, and all our existing processes and procedures are based around Windows/Office.
The desktop (and associated IT functions related to the desktop) is the one area where Microsoft has a real competitive advantage that will be very hard for anyone else to erode. Yet they seem blithely willing to ignore it, throw it away, in favor of moving to new lines of business where existing competition is fierce and they don't bring anything new to the table. It doesn't make any damn sense, and if the stockholders cared about the long-term viability of the company, they'd pitch Ballmer (and his chair) out the window right now.
Developers developers developers (Score:2)
Oh well, so much for that theory.
Technet? Azure is what's being pushed (Score:2)
Now you'll have to put that test client on the cloud and get it through Azure so you can do your testing. I'm sure with Azure you can deploy almost any Windows OS you want.
Technet is NOT the Developer stack (Score:2)
MSDN is the developer stack. More stuff, but costs more too
Technet subscription must check in every 24 hours (Score:2)
Two-way street: feedback as well as output (Score:3)
I liked the way TechNet felt like a group of people united around the purpose of pushing MSFT's software beyond its stated limits. I think they improved a lot as a result of the feedback they got.
Piracy (Score:2)
All done now (Score:4, Interesting)
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I guess you get to either pay-up, or go cold-turkey and join the Libreoffice club.
Oh look, MS is shooting themselves in the foot again.
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TechNet subscriptions don't include Visual Studio anyways. So your comparison to the highest priced MSDN tier is pretty disingenuous. If you need dev tools you would have always needed to buy at least the MSDN Visual Studio Professional which is $1200.
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You are partly right and partly wrong.
People did tend to stretch the technet subscription. Certainly on for my part it ended up being rigged all the way at home, in VMs with a scratch infrastructure used for work and for fun. Microsoft and pretty much everyone else has twigged that whats happened is a slippage where I think I am not alone. Companies do not give me a test farm. As a tech, I think MS fund this out. My company found this out. I was either going to end up worse at what I do - Or do this.
But, an
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i new microsoft BOB got a promotion to marketing.
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you will use MS Assuer and like it