The word microISV is all business, in all the wrong ways.
MicroISV stands for “Micro Independent Software Vendor”, which in plain english means a tiny software company, usually on the order of one or three people.
Probably the best reason to buy software from such a small shop is passion. People who build and sell their own software directly tend to care very deeply about it. Their program is their baby. Nobody in a microISV is just in it for the paycheck. No matter how cool a large corporation is, at the end of the day everyone has to compromise on their dream to work together on it. But a one man shop never has to compromise or design by committee.
“Micro Independent Software Vendor” doesn’t communicate this agile vision. It sounds like the same kind of turgid enterprise think that drove the world’s largest software company to rename Netbooks, “low-cost small notebook PCs”. (You just can’t make this stuff up!)
Three people are never going to out-Big-Business a Big Business. So it just doesn’t make sense to label what they do with a Big Business Word. (And by word, I mean several words, because that’s how Enterprise Speak works.)
The most popular synonym for microISV I see in the Mac software scene is indy developer. I think it’s a fine term — better than microISV by about a factor of IBM’s income. But there are many other excellent alternatives to “indie”, like boutique, nano, one-man, etc. The exact term isn’t important; and it need not be short. If someone wants to open their own “Hand Cyphered Soft-Wares Emporium“, then more power to them! What’s important is that their taxonomy reflect the culture of commitment that goes into their unique software.
EDITED TO ADD: Small Batch Business is another fantastic name.