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Microsoft made a formal announcement about BizSPpark today.  From their web site:

Microsoft® BizSpark™ is a global program designed to help accelerate the success of early stage startups by providing key resources when they need it the most:

Basically, Microsoft is doing a solid for startups by providing them with a bunch of full-featured, licensed development tools (including VSTS and TFS Standard Edition to say the least), the MSDN library and a whole lot more.  What do you need to do to qualify?

• Actively be engaged in development of a software-based product or service that will form a core piece of its current or intended business^[1],
• Be privately held,
• Be in business for less than 3 years^[2], and
• Generate less than USD $1 million in annual revenue^[3].

Since that pretty well represents the little guy (including my own business in it's first three years) - I imagine a lot of people are really going to benefit from this program.  Kudos to Microsoft for recognizing their social responsibility in growing new businesses.

Development, The Industry vsts, visual studio 2008, tfs