Re: [DotGNU]Developers: What .Net will cost you

[Rhys Weatherley]

Bill Lance wrote:

> Another facet of .NET
>
> http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-7629784.html?tag=pt.rss..feed.ne_7629784
>
> An average developer will pay MS $10,000 a year?

An MSDN subscription currently costs over A$3000
(US$1500) per year.  And that's just for a bunch of
compilers and documentation and stuff.  Charging
developers high prices is not new for Microsoft.

This probably refers to hosting the application on
Microsoft's servers, or to have it linked from one
of Microsoft's servers.

If you want to create your own application and host it
on your own system, with no direct links from Microsoft,
you should be able to do that.  However, without that
direct link, you won't have as great of exposure and
may lose traffic because of it.

i.e. Microsoft is essentially selling search engine space
for Web services.  If you are on the search engine,
you get greater exposure than if you aren't.  They
intend to be the Yahoo of Web services.

The way to counter this is very simple: set up a service
that will list Web services for free, or very cheaply,
and then promote it as an alternative.  If it becomes
popular, then it will have the exposure benefits without
the high developer cost.

Cheers,

Rhys.