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by teh_klev
2184 days ago
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> subscription CD based library Back in the 90's I used to be the custodian and curator of our great big box of MSDN CD's ensuring that updates and replacements were properly seen to. Oh the memories :) In fairness you didn't just get the development tools, you also got copies of just about every MS server and office product on what were fairly generous developer licenses. Many of these things didn't even require phoning home for "activation" and MS turned a blind eye to partners sharing one copy amongst 10-15 devs; after all the real money was where the fruit of our efforts would be deployed, stuff running in banks and other corporates paying serious coin for server licenses and direct support. Ultimately all this stuff was about capturing developers mindsets with a view to selling production licenses. |
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It didn't start out that way... they added a premium level later, and that was the version that included all the free tooling. I still have volumes 3 and 5 (April 1993 and Fall 1993), and it's a single CD product that was mostly focused on just the documentation. (This is actually how I got my first CD-ROM drive... IIRC, the whole package, a one year subscription and a proprietary interface CD-ROM was $400).