5 ms·

It’s the licensing. It’s always been the licensing. The cost is untenable for startups (and yes I’m aware of the various bizspark and developer offerings). Thos

by a2tech 8y ago

It’s the licensing. It’s always been the licensing. The cost is untenable for startups (and yes I’m aware of the various bizspark and developer offerings). Those special deals are awesome in the beginning but they have nasty teeth when you’re two years in and you’ve just started to get traction and out of the blue you need to pony up for sql server or windows licenses.

hackits 8y ago
SQL Server/Windows Licenses costs shouldn't really be a problem if you've factor them into your business plan and expenses. The businesses that get into trouble are the ones that naively assume software is free.
- a2tech 8y ago
  They can be problematic if your growth doesn’t exactly match what your licensing growth plan is.
  - hackits 8y ago
    You shouldn't be in business if you don't know what your growth will be. That is all part of your business operation's and deployment strategy.
    - saagarjha 8y ago
      You might know exactly what your growth will be and realize that you cannot afford to license certain software after a certain point.
- ebikelaw 8y ago
  How do you figure in the chance that some birdbrain from Microsoft is going to call you up and demand that you participate in a "voluntary" audit of your license compliance, which you agreed to as a term of your Windows license agreement? I know many of you don't really remember the 90s, but Microsoft was and is evil. I wouldn't touch anything from them, or Oracle, with a ten-foot pole.
  - lovich 8y ago
    If you're going to go down that line of reasoning you are going to find out that no company is trustworthy, especially those at the top. Microsoft is much easier to deal with now vs the 90s precisely because they are no longer the top dog and know they have to compete with the FAANG companies for many of their offerings
    - beagle3 8y ago
      Last I looked, MS volume licensing terms were just as bad as in the early 2000's ; If you want the 50% discount, you have to agree to an external audit of any MS software. The licensing is even more complex than it was. I have no statistics about them being "easier to deal with", so I'll take your word for it; But they still hold the same power once you sign, and can use it at their discretion. No company is trustworthy, but some are much less than others - a few at the "trustworthy to be evil" level.
- InclinedPlane 8y ago
  The problem and the cost is not just the licensing. It's also the logistical overhead and the complexity tax. Imagine a parallel world, one where you could spin up Windows and SQL Server installations with ease and you just get a bill at the end of the year for your licensing costs, with easy payment and financing terms. If that were the way things work (and it is to some extent for the cloud, one reason why azure is so popular) then it wouldn't be terribly bad to deal with MS technology. But in large part that's not how things work. Instead you have to deal with the overhead of finding out exactly what you need (do I want Windows Server 2016? what's the advantage of getting the Data Center SKU? do I want SQL Server clustering? etc.) then you have to go out and buy it, install it. And then, after all of that, you have to occasionally put up with Microsoft barging into your business and doing an intrusive audit to make sure you're not stealing anything. Compare that to the alternatives out there. If you have a big beefy server you can spin up a VM host and infinity linux VMs, you can run as many copies of nginx, postres, and all the other great technologies out there that you want. And you don't have to be burdened about the complexity of licensing, let alone the cost. When you are paying developers 500, 1000, 1500 bucks a day that complexity cost, and the opportunity cost from not just feeling free to experiment and try things out can easily be more expensive than the actual licensing. I love C#, coding in VS with the .NET stack behind you almost feels like cheating or like "easy mode" because there's just so much available to you and so much you can do trivially in that world which takes so much work and pain with other tech stacks. But ultimately the truth is that nginx is pretty much just a better web server than IIS and linux is a better platform than Windows, especially for services. Docker on windows is light years improved today compared to where it was a year ago, but it's still an also ran compared to Docker on linux. The Microsoft platform just doesn't have the edge it used to, which makes it hard to justify the cost.
  - CyanLite2 8y ago
    The "new" Microsoft and .NET Core has solved much of the licensing issues and burden. Direct support for MySQL/Postgres and containerizing your app is only like 3 lines in your Dockerfile.
    - InclinedPlane 8y ago
- wenc 8y ago
  SQL Server and Windows licensing are actually major inhibitors, even at large enterprises. We have to manage our VL/CALs conservatively to control costs. Wanna spin up n VMs for production / distributed computing? For Windows, you have to license each VM, whereas with Linux, the incremental cost of another node is nearly 0. (Side note: I had high hopes for container support on Windows Server 2016 because unlike OS's, containers don't require individual licensing. Unfortunately Windows Containers are still immature, and are ironically second-class citizens in the Microsoft ecosystem compared to Linux containers) Wanna spin up a n database servers? A single SQL Server (Enterprise) instance is pretty pricey (and it's licensed per core, minimum 4), whereas Postgres is free for any number of users and any number of processor cores. You want several replicas of your SQL Server? It is $$$. With MySQL, every replica is free license-wise (there are other costs of course). The cloud has changed these calculations somewhat, but if your infrastructure is on-prem, Microsoft licensing can be prohibitive at scale.
  - __sr__ 8y ago
    Do not forget — Microsoft licence costs also increase with the number of CPU cores in your server. In addition to costs themselves, Microsoft licensing is a highly complex topic. One of my colleagues who deals with Microsoft jokes that someone well versed with MS licensing deserves a PhD. A lot of people simply don’t want to deal with all that when they have a thousand other things to worry about.
    - angry_octet 8y ago
      And because of the cost the accountants demand tight centralised control, which ends up being slow and unresponsive, and you find yourself spinning (emailing, writing business cases, managing and reporting expenditure) instead of doing. It is a huge negative.
      - __sr__ 8y ago
        The horror! Fill gazillions of forms in triplicate and get them approved before we’d let you do anything useful.
DenisM 8y ago
I could never understand this point of view. Can you elaborate? Windows tax amounts to about 30% bump in AWS ec2 costs. Typical CRUD startup will have their costs dominated by payroll, not hosting. If I can get my engineers 3% more efficient at the cost of making my hosting 30% more expensive I will do this in a heartbeat. What is the situation where you experience onerous Windows tax?
- mattchamb 8y ago
  I say this as a .net dev, but when I look at hosting stuff for myself, the few extra dollars influence my decision.
- h4b4n3r0 8y ago
  Why do you think they will be more (as opposed to less) efficent? Also, particular stacks attract a particular type of developer, and some are better than others. In particular, a lot of the ones that are good have been switching to Linux for the past decade and a half, and once you do that, going back to Windows is such a non-starter. It also doesn't help that Windows dev work typically pays substantially less. Stacks also have the varying number of "batteries" included, and on Linux, the Microsoft stack comes with very few "batteries".
- __sr__ 8y ago
  > If I can get my engineers 3% more efficient at the cost of making my hosting 30% more expensive I will do this in a heartbeat. How do you quantify engineers’ productivity? A Java or a Python developer (much easier to find than a .NET developer) will be a lot more productive in Java or Python. And it is not a universal fact that .NET developers are more productive than others. Python developers would argue the other way round.
  - DenisM 8y ago
    Who said anything about universal facts? I said if my engineers will be more productive then I will make that choice. Note the “if”. Point is - if a team is more productive using python they should use python. If it’s c# then they should use c#. Licensing cost doesn’t figure into the decision. People who complain about exorbitant licensing cost leave me confused because I do t see those costs.
paulie_a 8y ago
Honestly if some licensing is that problematic, your start up is doomed from the get go. Granted I will never use Microsoft products or service again because they just aren't my style or very good. That minimal cost should be the least of a startups concerns.
- reustle 8y ago
  That's such a silly SV mindset. Not everyone wants to raise a boatload of vc.
  - paulie_a 8y ago
    I grew up in Wisconsin, not exactly the heart of sv. The fairly minimal costs of servers pales in comparison to actually running a business. If licensing and servers are a cost issue vs normal business expenses. You are not going to be around very long
    - growlist 8y ago
      Depends whether you use Oracle or not
zamalek 8y ago
The whole "stack" thing is dumb as hell to begin with. Just because someone is using Linux, do they have to use Apache MySQL and PHP? Just because some is using Windows, do they have to use IIS, SQL Server and ASP? Where do Go, Rust, C++, serverless and containers fit into these handcuffs? Why can't someone run netcore on Linux? Why would someone use SQL for all their database problems? Stacks are an incredibly bad idea and need to go away. If you organically end up with LAMP because those technologies were best-in-class for your problem, then great. Use the best tool for the job, else your solution is categorically enterprise. "Stack" is merely an FOSS euphemism for enterprise behavior.
- rorykoehler 8y ago
  I agree in principle but in practice stacks end up "organically" being chosen as defaults regardless due to the benefits of having an active ecosystem. Tools that are technically better but not actively supported end up being sidelined by popular tools everyone knows plays nice with their chosen framework.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- pjc50 8y ago
  The best tool for the job depends on which other tools you are using, synergistically.
yread 8y ago
What licensing? You can develop in VS community edition (less than 250 PCs and 1 M$ revenue) and deploy to Linux. You can use any DB you like with that. bizspark has been cancelled last year because of too much abuse - MS offers alternative program only for startup incubator alumni.
- lucideer 8y ago
  > deploy to Linux. You can use any DB you like with that I don't think Linux or "any DB you like" fall within the OP's definition of "the Microsoft tech stack" that disappeared.
- _up 8y ago
  You forgot this part:"In non-enterprise organizations, up to five users can use Visual Studio Community."
  - angry_octet 8y ago
    Yep, we had to ban VS Community because it really isn't community (as in, lacking some features but free as in beer) but hobbyist. If you want to use it, budget for VS Pro.

by a2tech 8y ago

hackits 8y ago

SQL Server/Windows Licenses costs shouldn't really be a problem if you've factor them into your business plan and expenses. The businesses that get into trouble are the ones that naively assume software is free.

a2tech 8y ago
They can be problematic if your growth doesn’t exactly match what your licensing growth plan is.
- hackits 8y ago
  You shouldn't be in business if you don't know what your growth will be. That is all part of your business operation's and deployment strategy.
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    You might know exactly what your growth will be and realize that you cannot afford to license certain software after a certain point.
ebikelaw 8y ago
How do you figure in the chance that some birdbrain from Microsoft is going to call you up and demand that you participate in a "voluntary" audit of your license compliance, which you agreed to as a term of your Windows license agreement? I know many of you don't really remember the 90s, but Microsoft was and is evil. I wouldn't touch anything from them, or Oracle, with a ten-foot pole.
- lovich 8y ago
  If you're going to go down that line of reasoning you are going to find out that no company is trustworthy, especially those at the top. Microsoft is much easier to deal with now vs the 90s precisely because they are no longer the top dog and know they have to compete with the FAANG companies for many of their offerings
  - beagle3 8y ago
    Last I looked, MS volume licensing terms were just as bad as in the early 2000's ; If you want the 50% discount, you have to agree to an external audit of any MS software. The licensing is even more complex than it was. I have no statistics about them being "easier to deal with", so I'll take your word for it; But they still hold the same power once you sign, and can use it at their discretion. No company is trustworthy, but some are much less than others - a few at the "trustworthy to be evil" level.
InclinedPlane 8y ago
The problem and the cost is not just the licensing. It's also the logistical overhead and the complexity tax. Imagine a parallel world, one where you could spin up Windows and SQL Server installations with ease and you just get a bill at the end of the year for your licensing costs, with easy payment and financing terms. If that were the way things work (and it is to some extent for the cloud, one reason why azure is so popular) then it wouldn't be terribly bad to deal with MS technology. But in large part that's not how things work. Instead you have to deal with the overhead of finding out exactly what you need (do I want Windows Server 2016? what's the advantage of getting the Data Center SKU? do I want SQL Server clustering? etc.) then you have to go out and buy it, install it. And then, after all of that, you have to occasionally put up with Microsoft barging into your business and doing an intrusive audit to make sure you're not stealing anything. Compare that to the alternatives out there. If you have a big beefy server you can spin up a VM host and infinity linux VMs, you can run as many copies of nginx, postres, and all the other great technologies out there that you want. And you don't have to be burdened about the complexity of licensing, let alone the cost. When you are paying developers 500, 1000, 1500 bucks a day that complexity cost, and the opportunity cost from not just feeling free to experiment and try things out can easily be more expensive than the actual licensing. I love C#, coding in VS with the .NET stack behind you almost feels like cheating or like "easy mode" because there's just so much available to you and so much you can do trivially in that world which takes so much work and pain with other tech stacks. But ultimately the truth is that nginx is pretty much just a better web server than IIS and linux is a better platform than Windows, especially for services. Docker on windows is light years improved today compared to where it was a year ago, but it's still an also ran compared to Docker on linux. The Microsoft platform just doesn't have the edge it used to, which makes it hard to justify the cost.
- CyanLite2 8y ago
  The "new" Microsoft and .NET Core has solved much of the licensing issues and burden. Direct support for MySQL/Postgres and containerizing your app is only like 3 lines in your Dockerfile.
  - InclinedPlane 8y ago
wenc 8y ago
SQL Server and Windows licensing are actually major inhibitors, even at large enterprises. We have to manage our VL/CALs conservatively to control costs. Wanna spin up n VMs for production / distributed computing? For Windows, you have to license each VM, whereas with Linux, the incremental cost of another node is nearly 0. (Side note: I had high hopes for container support on Windows Server 2016 because unlike OS's, containers don't require individual licensing. Unfortunately Windows Containers are still immature, and are ironically second-class citizens in the Microsoft ecosystem compared to Linux containers) Wanna spin up a n database servers? A single SQL Server (Enterprise) instance is pretty pricey (and it's licensed per core, minimum 4), whereas Postgres is free for any number of users and any number of processor cores. You want several replicas of your SQL Server? It is $$$. With MySQL, every replica is free license-wise (there are other costs of course). The cloud has changed these calculations somewhat, but if your infrastructure is on-prem, Microsoft licensing can be prohibitive at scale.
- __sr__ 8y ago
  Do not forget — Microsoft licence costs also increase with the number of CPU cores in your server. In addition to costs themselves, Microsoft licensing is a highly complex topic. One of my colleagues who deals with Microsoft jokes that someone well versed with MS licensing deserves a PhD. A lot of people simply don’t want to deal with all that when they have a thousand other things to worry about.
  - angry_octet 8y ago
    And because of the cost the accountants demand tight centralised control, which ends up being slow and unresponsive, and you find yourself spinning (emailing, writing business cases, managing and reporting expenditure) instead of doing. It is a huge negative.
    - __sr__ 8y ago
      The horror! Fill gazillions of forms in triplicate and get them approved before we’d let you do anything useful.

DenisM 8y ago

I could never understand this point of view. Can you elaborate? Windows tax amounts to about 30% bump in AWS ec2 costs. Typical CRUD startup will have their costs dominated by payroll, not hosting. If I can get my engineers 3% more efficient at the cost of making my hosting 30% more expensive I will do this in a heartbeat. What is the situation where you experience onerous Windows tax?

mattchamb 8y ago
I say this as a .net dev, but when I look at hosting stuff for myself, the few extra dollars influence my decision.
h4b4n3r0 8y ago
Why do you think they will be more (as opposed to less) efficent? Also, particular stacks attract a particular type of developer, and some are better than others. In particular, a lot of the ones that are good have been switching to Linux for the past decade and a half, and once you do that, going back to Windows is such a non-starter. It also doesn't help that Windows dev work typically pays substantially less. Stacks also have the varying number of "batteries" included, and on Linux, the Microsoft stack comes with very few "batteries".
__sr__ 8y ago
> If I can get my engineers 3% more efficient at the cost of making my hosting 30% more expensive I will do this in a heartbeat. How do you quantify engineers’ productivity? A Java or a Python developer (much easier to find than a .NET developer) will be a lot more productive in Java or Python. And it is not a universal fact that .NET developers are more productive than others. Python developers would argue the other way round.
- DenisM 8y ago
  Who said anything about universal facts? I said if my engineers will be more productive then I will make that choice. Note the “if”. Point is - if a team is more productive using python they should use python. If it’s c# then they should use c#. Licensing cost doesn’t figure into the decision. People who complain about exorbitant licensing cost leave me confused because I do t see those costs.

paulie_a 8y ago

Honestly if some licensing is that problematic, your start up is doomed from the get go. Granted I will never use Microsoft products or service again because they just aren't my style or very good. That minimal cost should be the least of a startups concerns.

reustle 8y ago
That's such a silly SV mindset. Not everyone wants to raise a boatload of vc.
- paulie_a 8y ago
  I grew up in Wisconsin, not exactly the heart of sv. The fairly minimal costs of servers pales in comparison to actually running a business. If licensing and servers are a cost issue vs normal business expenses. You are not going to be around very long
  - growlist 8y ago
    Depends whether you use Oracle or not

zamalek 8y ago

The whole "stack" thing is dumb as hell to begin with. Just because someone is using Linux, do they have to use Apache MySQL and PHP? Just because some is using Windows, do they have to use IIS, SQL Server and ASP? Where do Go, Rust, C++, serverless and containers fit into these handcuffs? Why can't someone run netcore on Linux? Why would someone use SQL for all their database problems? Stacks are an incredibly bad idea and need to go away. If you organically end up with LAMP because those technologies were best-in-class for your problem, then great. Use the best tool for the job, else your solution is categorically enterprise. "Stack" is merely an FOSS euphemism for enterprise behavior.

rorykoehler 8y ago
I agree in principle but in practice stacks end up "organically" being chosen as defaults regardless due to the benefits of having an active ecosystem. Tools that are technically better but not actively supported end up being sidelined by popular tools everyone knows plays nice with their chosen framework.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
pjc50 8y ago
The best tool for the job depends on which other tools you are using, synergistically.

yread 8y ago

What licensing? You can develop in VS community edition (less than 250 PCs and 1 M$ revenue) and deploy to Linux. You can use any DB you like with that. bizspark has been cancelled last year because of too much abuse - MS offers alternative program only for startup incubator alumni.

lucideer 8y ago
> deploy to Linux. You can use any DB you like with that I don't think Linux or "any DB you like" fall within the OP's definition of "the Microsoft tech stack" that disappeared.
_up 8y ago
You forgot this part:"In non-enterprise organizations, up to five users can use Visual Studio Community."
- angry_octet 8y ago
  Yep, we had to ban VS Community because it really isn't community (as in, lacking some features but free as in beer) but hobbyist. If you want to use it, budget for VS Pro.