I understand your point, and the fact the Microsoft exploits this, but it doesn’t make it right. My hope in writing this article was to educate would be users of this service that this might not be the right solution for them; giving them another perspective.

The beauty of open source tools is that anyone can provide a service around them. The most common method of monetising open source is through value added services. There are many companies that will provide the IT support for a business using open source software.

Companies that opt to go with BizSpark and stick with Microsoft products after three years will not only have to pay the IT support fees, they’ll also be hit up for product license fees.

The only benefit of BizSpark, as far as I can deduce, is the free support. This, in my opinion, does not outweigh the cost in terms of vendor lock-in.

Microsoft (clearly) know this and exploit it to generate revenue.

In fact, having it stated explicitly like this implies to me there are in fact costs, ie: at some stage we will start charging you, we just won’t tell you up front how much or how often. Nice.

I notice from your blog that you’re a Microsoft employee and are part of the BizSpark team so thanks for adding your perspective.

I agree that people can choose both, and PHP on Windows is a great example of where people don’t get locked in to Microsoft’s products and can easily redeploy on free and open source platforms. I wonder, do you support BizSpark members who are having problems getting PHP, Apache and MySQL running on Windows Server 2008?

In terms of visibility, I read on your blog that BizSpark allows members to have their company profile listed on the Microsoft Startup Zone site to allow potential partners and investors to find you. I’d be interested to find out how effective this is.

As for support, I’ve never had any problems getting community support for any of the open source products I’ve used. I find the community is always very eager to help both professionals like me and beginners alike. I can’t comment on the quality of Microsoft’s support though, never havig used it; even during my time as a Microsoft system administrator I found the community support options more than adequate and professional.

I would like to take exception to your comment in point 3. Are you implying that the Linux kernel is just a toy? That people who use OpenOffice.org and Linux do not focus, or are unable to focus on expertise? Would you consider Singapore’s Ministry of Defence, the French Tax Agency, the Belgian Federal Public Justice Service, Banco do Brasil, Bangkok Airways, Peugeot Citroën and many more to prefer to focus on “playing with” open source than expertise?

You finish off by giving a list of successful companies that are built on Microsoft. I don’t see the relevance. I’m not suggesting you cannot be successful if you use Microsoft technologies. Being successful does not imply being locked in to a particular vendor, and vice versa. successful and being locked in to a particular vendor are mutually exclusive. As you know, there is also a large list of successful companies that do not use Microsoft, there are also unsuccessful companies that use Microsoft and unsuccessful ones that don’t.

I look forward to your response!

Ben