Wow, this just gets better by the day.
http://technet.microsoft.com/subscriptions/default.aspx

My apologies as I understand this is not a Windows 8.1 question/discussion per se, but still quite relevant with all of the "recent" decisions coming out of Redmond.

Looks great. These kind of offerings are going to be free. There is no reason to charge for people to either evaluate your product or help service your portfolio.

Especially not with Open Source around. Great to see Microsoft is moving it business models around. Very important for them.

Nice participation from the side of Microsoft.

Also if materials are better organized i.e. compared to similar Open Source offerings, i.e. more professional, i.e. the quality - it will be competitive. I.e. more edge but state-of-the-art price 0 (compared to Open Source, i.e. "freemium")

Anyway, end of exclusive access. It's about the for all market as well.

Ubiquitous computing is just imaginary - without any margins. IT and software ... system interactions ... constructed into all kinds of stuff. I.e. all stuff becomes "part of nature" ...

Looks great.  These kind of offerings are going to be free.  There is no reason to charge for people to either evaluate your product or help service your portfolio.

Fear not.  You can still get an msdn subscription starting at 4X the price.

Read Ed Bott's take on it here.

 

Maybe they'll start charging tiered subscription fees for access to this TechNet forum.

Or retire it too.

Looks great. These kind of offerings are going to be free. There is no reason to charge for people to either evaluate your product or help service your portfolio.

Especially not with Open Source around. Great to see Microsoft is moving it business models around. Very important for them.

Nice participation from the side of Microsoft.

Also if materials are better organized i.e. compared to similar Open Source offerings, i.e. more professional, i.e. the quality - it will be competitive. I.e. more edge but state-of-the-art price 0 (compared to Open Source, i.e. "freemium")

Anyway, end of exclusive access. It's about the for all market as well.

Ubiquitous computing is just imaginary - without any margins. IT and software ... system interactions ... constructed into all kinds of stuff. I.e. all stuff becomes "part of nature" ...

You obviously never had a paid TechNet subscription nor understand what it actually offers.  Open Source is nice, but--as it stands now--it is no replacement for Exchange, Lync, Dynamics, etc..  Having the ability to learn, practice, and investigate using all of the enterprise class products is almost priceless.