Dave Bost

Today, Microsoft announced DreamSpark. A program through Channel8 that will offer our developer and designer tools at no charge to college students. This initial release is targeted at 10 countries worldwide including China, Germany, France, Finland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Canada, the UK and the US. After a few details are ironed out, future phases will be released to a wider global spread. There are also plans to open this up to High School students in the near future.

The products available include the following:

Channel8 talks to BillG about DreamSpark

The software is available to all college-level students regardless of discipline, major or class. There are some caveats though. This software is provided free of charge as long as the software isn’t being used for commercial purposes. You can build the next Facebook in your college dorm, but once you go commercial with it you need to purchase an appropriate usage license.

There will be challenges in the beginning. As it turns out, there’s no easy way to verify a student’s status. Although 90% of the people who take advantage of this program will have a problem free experience, there may be some edge case that prove to be a little more difficult. We’ll get these ironed out as the program rolls out. You can read the FAQ for more information:

• Student FAQ: http://downloads.channel8.msdn.com/FAQ/Students.aspx
• Administrators FAQ: http://downloads.channel8.msdn.com/FAQ/UniversityAdministrators.aspx

The plans is simple here - to provide student’s with the tools to help them succeed in the technology and design fields. This falls directly into our plans to help grow the software economy and I applaud this move. Channel8 has a video interview with BillG discussing DreamSpark and the opportunities it presents.