Saturday, March 14, 2009

Rumor: SharePoint Designer 2007, soon to be free? (or given the April 1st date…)

Fear and Loathing - SharePoint Designer, Free as in Beer

“I caught a couple of blog posts from here and here that had to make me do a double take. I’m not one for relaying gossip, but this information seems to be legit. As of April 1, 2009 SharePoint Designer will be free. Now if you go to the “official” site there’s no mention of it however I’m hearing through the grapevine it’s true. The official site even has a “buy it today” option, so you might want to hold off on that

…”

SADev.co.za - Get SharePoint Designer For Free

“…

Microsoft will offer SharePoint Designer 2007 free of charge, as a download, starting April 1, 2009. This change is being made in order to help customers get the most value out of their investments in SharePoint products and technologies.  Microsoft will remove SharePoint Designer 2007 from the April 2009 Volume Licensing price list.

Customers with active SA as of April 1, 2009 will be able to upgrade to Expression Web.  SharePoint Designer is not “end-of-life.” The next version of SharePoint Designer will ship together with the next release of SharePoint.

…”

Personally I think this makes a great deal of sense, as this just increases the value of SharePoint, making it easier for everyone to customize, integrate into their business, and thereby become tightly coupled. And really how many copies of SharePoint Designer were sold compared to SharePoint CAL’s and the likelihood of that ratio to change? Bundling SharePoint Designer as just another part of SharePoint would be a cool move…

Given the date though I have to wonder at the validity of this. Businesses should know by now to not do anything “real” on April 1st. 3/31 or 4/2 is fine, but on 4/1, everything is suspect…

In any case, if/when I hear more I’ll pass it on.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

April 2 is the date...

Greg said...

Thanks! :)

Anonymous said...

April 1st and the official site still says "Buy it today".

Greg said...

@Anonymous#2
Note the comment from Anonymous#1...

Tomorrow is likely the date...

alexandrul said...

The trial version released today didn't asked for a product key and it seems to be already activated.

Greg said...

It’s official, SharePoint Designer 2007 is now free… as in free (Reg-ware)