Because use of open source is so widespread among startups, Microsoft realized they were missing opportunities and recently launched the BizSpark program. Essentially a startup gets access to all their software for free! You may be thinking there is no such thing as a free lunch and you’d be right. For them it is an opportunity to lock companies in when they are getting started with the proviso that they will pay from the software in three years. In the interim the only requirement is helping them with PR by providing feedback and ’soundbytes’. We used Vista immediately and are investigating whether a switch to SQL with ASP.net makes sense for us.

But really, Open Source is just the result of people realizing that there’s no need to make people pay to re-invent the wheel over and over again.