Microsoft Sets Tolls for .Net Developers

matsh writes: "Today Microsoft revealed the cost of signing up as a developer to .Net. Entry level is $1,000. Standard level $10,000. Custom support will cost even more."

Comments

Smaller developers

[izwiz]

Interesting. What they are doing then is creating a bar to smaller (perhaps hobbyist) developers.

That just means that less cool stuff will be produced then I suppose.

Re:Smaller developers

[Tadeusz]

I think they are embracing smaller developers. If you want to code and you have notepad then you'll be able to use the free C# (and maybe VB) compilers available from the MS website. Once you become more serious then you can purchase a good development enviroment off them (or grab the free one that someone will build).

If Microsoft posted an article this misleading about Linux people would be jumping up and down shouting FUD!! FUD!!... Maybe it should be changed to point out what this fee is really for?

More on the broad front

[pointym5]

... in the war to drive out small-scale developers in favor of well-controlled large corporate entities. People paying that much money for the privilege of developing software are very likely to be quite aggressive in convincing themselves that they're happy. And note that much of the fees here will come from big fat IT budgets for internal application development. CIOs just want an empire like anybody else, and this sort of thing really fuels the fires.

I thought Microsoft had learned this lesson before

[joshv]

One of the reason that so many people are now using Windows 9x/ME/2000 is that Microsoft bascially gave away their SDK back in the days of Win 3.x, while IBM was looking to their OS/2 SDK as part of their revenue model, and charging accordingly.

I would have thought Microsoft learned a valuable lesson back then.

-josh

Re: comparison w/ developer connections

[bLanark]

This isn't for the SDK/tools, which you can get via the MSDN, if not for free online.

This is to be hosted/linked/use the core .net services such as passport. If you're developing an in-house app that doesn't touch the microsoft .net website (damn, the terminology is all wrong) then you don't need to pay your 10K USD.

This is .NET My Services, not all of .NET

[gburgyan]

This is not MS trying to inflict a toll on development -- this is MS trying to make money by selling a service. The .NET My Services is a service that interfaces with MSN Messanger to allow instant communication with your users and also authentication. Seriously people, every time MS charges for something it becomes news on slash...

The last company I was working for was going to authenticate financial transactions. Let me tell you that they were not going to do it for free. How is this any different? Or maybe the phone company charging for setting up your phone lines and billing your company monthly?

MS is charging for a service and you can choose to use it or not.

Perhaps the open source community can get together and create a distributed authentication system to compete with it.

Re:I thought Microsoft had learned this lesson bef

[swb]

They did. The lesson was to give it away until the competitors selling theirs went away. When they go away, charge as much as you like.

Re:I thought Microsoft had learned this lesson bef

[NeoMage]

Dear o dear, this news item is really going to confuse all you people who like to speak before you have done your homework.

For starters, this is the ".NET My Services" service, it is NOT the .NET platform itself, nor is it an SDK. People are free to write .NET applications for NOTHING and all the SDK is online at msdn.microsoft.com (fuck the link, you can cut and paste).

This is no different from the city library developing a .NET service for reserving books or something and charging you to use it.

Re:Don't compare

[rknop]

With the failings of the dotcom model, someone needs to start using the web for just more than a bunch of websites offering resources and to put this emmence network to some practical use.

Where does this assumption come from that if big companies aren't making money off of it, the net is not being of practical use? I just don't get it. Yes, I can see why companies would want to find a way to make the web useful for business. What I don't get is why all of us as a whole world population should think that this is necessary for the web to be useful. I send lots of E-mail; I find scientific preprints online; I can easily post information that people across the world can see; I download huge quantities of free software to run personal and professonal workstations; I order some books and computer hardware online. All of these things are of tremedous use to me, but by and large only the infrastructure providers are profiting off of it. Why should we think that the web isn't of any use right now just because, as one self-styled luminary noted, it isn't obeying some basic rules of business?

Mind you, if companies do find ways to make money off if it, I don't begrudge that... IF (1) I'm not forced into using it (and with M$ behind passport, I bet it will get very difficult for me to do the sort of online commerce I've done in the pass without giving into it, which will piss me off), and if (2) the great elements about the open web which is a "collection of websites" right now don't go away (and the entertainment industry very much wants them to go away in order to turn the internet into the next TV so that they can more easily make money off of it). I'm not anti-business, but I really would like the internet and the web to keep some of the great features it has right now.

-Rob

This Has Nothing To Do With The SDK

[Carnage4Life]

One of the reason that so many people are now using Windows 9x/ME/2000 is that Microsoft bascially gave away their SDK back in the days of Win 3.x, while IBM was looking to their OS/2 SDK as part of their revenue model, and charging accordingly.

The article is about pricing for accessing .NET My Services which used to be called Hailstorm not the .NET Framework SDK.

Evidence of demand, benefits for customer

[pubjames]

What I don't understand about Microsoft's .NET strategy is

a) Where is the evidence of demand for it?
b) What are the benefits for the customer?

I regularly buy flights on the net, also books. I tend to use the same companies each time. They have my details, I just need to select the product I require and click the accept button. I know that my info. only resides with them, and I trust them not to spread it around.

Where does .NET fit into this?

I am imagining going to a web site, say Amazon. The site asks me "Can Amazon access your hobby list to make recommendations?" Er, sorry, no it can't. "Can Amazon access your calendar so we can find when your birthday is?". Er, nope. "Can Amazon access your address book so we can tell your friends about our great products?" Absolutely not. "Can Amazon access your job profile so we can suggest some business books?". No, and stop asking the dumb questions. The answer is no.

There are lots of, for instance, on-line calendar services available, which can be accessed from any web enabled device or WAP phone. Do people use them that much? What would Microsoft provide that I can't already get? And would it be worth paying for?

Please, someone tell me, I'm dying to know. What is the benefit to me, Joe Consumer, of .NET???

Re:Evidence of demand, benefits for customer

[revscat]

d) you want to buy a product from a web site. It asks your date of birth. Response: 1/1/1970.
Do they seriously believe that people are going to give them that info?

Yes, they do. And people will.

I have been involved in setting up several web ventures; a handful of them were even successful. One project I was working on involved credit scoring with hooks into buying insurance and such. Before setting off on this we did some research on how willing people would be to become a part of this, seeing as how it required more than the usual amount of personal information. The company we outsourced the research to came back with some truly unexpected results: over 60% of the respondents either were willing to give their information, or didn't have strong feelings against it. Only around 25% of the people we surveyed responded negatively.

Remember, this was information such as social security number, credit history, mother's maiden name, and so forth -- the most personal of information. This took us completely by surprise; we were fully expecting this to be a major hurdle to overcome.

Eventually the effort was killed not by lack of market potential, but by legislation prohibiting the distribution of such information directly to the consumer. (This was backed largely by the credit reporting agencies and their lobbies.)

So do I beleive that .NET will be successful? Absoultely. If it offers even the most trivial of benefits to consumers, they will flock to it like cattle to the slaughter.

Moving to a services business will be painful

[mav[LAG]]

Microsoft's business right now is selling millions of CDs with the same code on it to as many customers as they can. There are multi-billion dollar niceties like marketing and getting existing customers to buy newer versions of the code but ultimately Microsoft's core business is to get as many of those discs out the door and installed onto customers' hardware - by whatever channel they can.

.NET and its components represent a shift away from this. A huge shift. Instead of selling code, the company wants to sell services. And when you sell services, a lot of things change about your business model which can be very painful while you're trying to make the move.

• Services are different from boxed product. Well doh. But more than one IT company has been bitten by that in the past. Charging for a service means customers generally demand that service from you. If they don't get it, they go elsewhere. And on the Web, there are plenty of places to go - most of them for free.
  
• Offering services means your infrastructure has to change - radically. Instead of a finely tuned assembly line turning out the latest products, a services-based business must offer the best infrastructure in the game to customers. Don't believe me? Then check out the unique selling points of any systems integrator you can think of. Our Global Network Brings Economies of Scale! We Will Manage Your Infrastructure! Does Microsoft have the reputation for security and reliability that goes with running an infrastructure? Not at the moment. Not even nearly.
  
• There are limits to the economies of scale in a services business that aren't there in a software business. As one of the linked articles says, Microsoft has many millions of Windows users out there, but hardly any monthly billing relationships with any of them. It has to find some way of getting to that ideal, but it will find that selling millions of CDs is a very different proposition to selling millions of relationships - because that's what it is. Sure you can wrap it all up in words like Convenience and Access Anytime Anywhere but a service contract is a relationship. It takes post-sale time and effort - something which Microsoft will have to learn because the company doesn't know a hell of a lot about it now.
  
• Services represent a trust relationship - packaged software often represents a grudge relationship The lock-in of Windows can be very easily side-stepped in a services model. Don't like the service? Don't sign up for it. Don't like the levels of service you got last month? Don't pay for them. Or go somewhere else.
  

Make no mistake - moving from a boxed product model to a services-based model is hard, whether you are a small dealer or Microsoft Corp. And often the two have clashing priorities. At the moment Microsoft spends hundreds of millions making sure its channel works hard at getting product out to the end user. If they ultimately want to move to services-based revenue and electronic upgrades, the channel could well find itself out in the cold eventually.

Re:Thin Edge

[JabberWokky]

It's not that much, considering that any decent musical instrument costs at least $1k, and impoverished musicians find a way to come up with that sort of cash all the time.

Yes, but your guitar will last you for decades... when do you think the next version of .Net will be released, and how much do you think it will cost? $1000 over 20 years versus $1000 a year is a very different thing. Also, you *can* get a decent guitar for $160 instead of $1200, and would be advised to while you are learning to play, and you'll discover that the two have very different uses. Playing Bach, I'll use the $1200 guitar. Playing Nick Cave, I'll use the $160 guitar. Switch the two around, and it just doesn't sound as nice - in either direction (a bit of buzz on the bottom E and lots of hollow slapping with my palm on the body adds quite a bit to a song like "Kiss Off", but not to "Sweet Baby James"). If both cost $1000, I wouldn't own both.

Look at Basic - half the reason so many people learned it in the early 80s is because it was on a ROM on half the computers out there - Apple ][, IBM PC, etc. And for those that didn't have it, it generally came with the OS (GW Basic, BASICA, etc).

--
Evan

This story is misleading FUD

[Zico]

What Microsoft is charging for is for developers to hook into the .NET MyServices (formerly Hailstorm). That's because to use them, you'll be using Microsoft's own resources, i.e., Microsoft's bandwidth and servers. I think most people by now realize that the business model of giving this away for free is just about dead.

If you're developing apps that don't use .NET MyServices, there's no charge. You can download the .NET Framework SDK for free and write your programs in Notepad if you want. This includes standalone apps, server apps, and even web services -- just not .NET MyServices.

Unless Slashdot is just interested in shoving FUD down the throat of all its readers -- and I would hope you'd consider it an insult to your intelligence that they would do this -- they really should correct the story submission.