4 ms·

This is the same old strategy of giving students discounts which get them accustomed to proprietary products, then marketing to those same students when they gr

This is the same old strategy of giving students discounts which get them accustomed to proprietary products, then marketing to those same students when they graduate. Now it's just adapted for remotely-hosted software.

x5n1 11y ago
How many successful startups have actually been built on top on Microsoft software. I know Plenty of Fish is one example, but you just don't hear of that many examples of successful startups built on top of Microsoft's stack. The reason being that paying Microsoft's tax as you scale eats into your profits and your growth.
- deweerdt 11y ago
  MySpace had (has?) an MS stack, and it was called successful at one point.
  - ralmidani 11y ago
    The point is not that no successful startups have been built on a Microsoft stack. But for every one that has, ten have been built on GNU/Linux.
    - ntakasaki 11y ago
      The Azure credits can be used to run 'GNU/Linux'. A full one fifth of workloads on Azure run Linux.
- biot 11y ago
  I'm sure a few here have run across Stack Overflow. edit: http://highscalability.com/stack-overflow-architecture http://highscalability.com/stack-overflow-architecture
  - jenscow 11y ago
    The article confirms: It's hard to separate out the Microsoft stack and the scale up approach because for licensing reasons they tend to go together. If you find yourself in the position of transitioning from scale up to scale out by adding dozens of cores, MS licensing will bite you.
    - biot 11y ago
      You know what else is crazy? If you find yourself in the position of scaling your dev team because your business is successful, salaries will bite you. If you thought MS licensing was expensive, try hiring senior developers! :)
- dzhiurgis 11y ago
  Current example - Xero.
banku_brougham 11y ago
Yes - a cost of goods sold calculation requires the downstream marketing impact. nice, I own MSFT!
onion2k 11y ago
So long as the course is designed independently of Microsoft then it's a failing of the university if that happens. Any donation of cloud services, from any given provider, could be used to teach "how to deploy to this specific cloud provider" or "how to deploy to cloud services". The university needs to go for the latter.
josteink 11y ago
> This is the same old strategy of giving students discounts which get them accustomed to proprietary products, then marketing to those same students when they graduate. Now it's just adapted for remotely-hosted software. Sure. But how is Azure and Microsoft cloud services any more proprietary than AWS or Google's offerings?
- e12e 11y ago
  They're not (other than aws being so popular/early-to-market that there are a few work-a-like open/Free olatforms emulating some of the apis/services). The 1 billion number sounds impressive on its own - wonder how many credits Amazon has given away by now? Lets hope MS reaches out to github or vice-versa so they can get added to the student pack: https://education.github.com/pack https://education.github.com/pack

x5n1 11y ago

How many successful startups have actually been built on top on Microsoft software. I know Plenty of Fish is one example, but you just don't hear of that many examples of successful startups built on top of Microsoft's stack. The reason being that paying Microsoft's tax as you scale eats into your profits and your growth.

deweerdt 11y ago
MySpace had (has?) an MS stack, and it was called successful at one point.
- ralmidani 11y ago
  The point is not that no successful startups have been built on a Microsoft stack. But for every one that has, ten have been built on GNU/Linux.
  - ntakasaki 11y ago
    The Azure credits can be used to run 'GNU/Linux'. A full one fifth of workloads on Azure run Linux.
biot 11y ago
I'm sure a few here have run across Stack Overflow. edit: http://highscalability.com/stack-overflow-architecture http://highscalability.com/stack-overflow-architecture
- jenscow 11y ago
  The article confirms: It's hard to separate out the Microsoft stack and the scale up approach because for licensing reasons they tend to go together. If you find yourself in the position of transitioning from scale up to scale out by adding dozens of cores, MS licensing will bite you.
  - biot 11y ago
    You know what else is crazy? If you find yourself in the position of scaling your dev team because your business is successful, salaries will bite you. If you thought MS licensing was expensive, try hiring senior developers! :)
dzhiurgis 11y ago
Current example - Xero.

banku_brougham 11y ago

Yes - a cost of goods sold calculation requires the downstream marketing impact. nice, I own MSFT!

onion2k 11y ago

So long as the course is designed independently of Microsoft then it's a failing of the university if that happens. Any donation of cloud services, from any given provider, could be used to teach "how to deploy to this specific cloud provider" or "how to deploy to cloud services". The university needs to go for the latter.

josteink 11y ago

> This is the same old strategy of giving students discounts which get them accustomed to proprietary products, then marketing to those same students when they graduate. Now it's just adapted for remotely-hosted software. Sure. But how is Azure and Microsoft cloud services any more proprietary than AWS or Google's offerings?

e12e 11y ago
They're not (other than aws being so popular/early-to-market that there are a few work-a-like open/Free olatforms emulating some of the apis/services). The 1 billion number sounds impressive on its own - wonder how many credits Amazon has given away by now? Lets hope MS reaches out to github or vice-versa so they can get added to the student pack: https://education.github.com/pack https://education.github.com/pack