5 ms·

If they'd used open-source software rather than the Microsoft stack, they could have scaled horizontally without having to worry about buying more software lice

If they'd used open-source software rather than the Microsoft stack, they could have scaled horizontally without having to worry about buying more software licenses.

mrweasel 5y ago
Personally I'd rather manage a small number of large servers, compared to managing a large number of smaller ones. The licensing costs associated with Stack Overflow also can't been that large. Sure Microsoft software isn't cheap, but it's also not that expensive. The licensing cost is easily offset by staying on a technology stack their employees know.
- kjgkjhfkjf 5y ago
  > The licensing cost is easily offset by staying on a technology stack their employees know. Stack Overflow wasn't developed by an established software company. It was a completely new startup, founded by two high-profile (at the time) software commentators. They could have hired people to use any stack they wanted. While the state of web development wasn't what it is today, OSS stacks such as the LAMP stack were fairly well-understood and popular.
  - mrweasel 5y ago
    That's a reasonable point, but still is the cost of the licens higher than the cost of one or two additional developers? Jeff Atwood was/is if I recall a pretty talented C# developer, so why onboard extra people. It's more than just their salary, there's a cost beyond that associated with hiring people. I'm not arguing that the licens isn't a concern, I just question how much of a concern it really is, compared to everything else.
  - marcosdumay 5y ago
    The MS stack is affordable to developers working on developing countries and free for small products (with a lot of strings attached). Of course, the OSS stack costs nothing to acquire, is cheaper to admin, and will give you more functionality and easiness of use, but the MS one isn't some unaffordable monster like other proprietary ones.
  - georgemcbay 5y ago
    Stack Overflow existed for a couple of years before taking any funding and it was developed by three people who were friends (Jeff Atwood, Jarrod Dixon and Geoff Dalgas) none of which were even getting paid regularly at the start and who were all primarily familiar with the .NET stack from previous jobs. It makes total sense why the tech is what it is. One could argue they could have shifted away from that stack since then, but one could also easily argue (very convincingly to anyone who has ever been involved with any significant project rewrite) "but... why?".
- darkwater 5y ago
  > The licensing costs associated with Stack Overflow also can't been that large Because we went with the reliability of a full Microsoft stack—.NET, C#, and MSSQL—our costs grew with the number of instances. Each server required a new license They literally mention license costs as an architecture driving constraint.
  - wwefwe2323g 5y ago
    It's probably only costs for SQL Server, because anything else (ASP.NET, .NET, C#, etc.) is free and open source.
    - reificator 5y ago
      Stack Overflow predates any of those being open source.
    - severino 5y ago
      You couldn't run ASP.NET in Linux back then, so you had to pay for a Windows license, too.
    - forty 5y ago
      Wouldn't they have to pay for IIS as well? (Not mentioning Windows itself?)
      - mrweasel 5y ago
        Windows server yes, you pay for that, but IIS comes bundled.
  - mrweasel 5y ago
    Sorry, I wasn't making that clear. It's not that it isn't a factor, they clearly think it is. The question is how big a factor is it really? My experience is that the licens is less of an issue, compared to the time and resources you'd otherwise need to redesign everything. When Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky started Stack Overflow they had a podcast. In that podcast Joel repeatably argued that hardware wasn't that expensive, compared to Jeffs time. His argument was that buying a larger server and scaling that way was much more cost-effective. I think that's still true, to a point, even if you didn't have the licensing cost.
pjmlp 5y ago
Software licenses are usually peanuts versus developer salaries and overall infrastructure costs of the whole company.
- tomnipotent 5y ago
  Agreed. It's always the people not paying for things that seem to be complaining about paying for things.
- 5e92cb50239222b 5y ago
  Depends on where you live. Certainly not peanuts here. Edit: I know that if you spent your whole life in California it can be hard to believe that in some places junior developers make $250 a month (senior more than that, but typically less than $1k a month), so a single Windows Server license buys you four months of work of a single junior dev (however unproductive it may be), or 1-1.5 months of a senior dev's work. In my current place of work a few years back I started a strong push towards Linux and as much FOSS as possible, and over some time (as new projects were written and some legacy stuff re-written) it resulted in a massive reduction of total operation costs. I didn't expect any other reaction, though. You understand our realities better than us.
p_l 5y ago
They also commented that the licenses paid for themselves in reduced hw spend, as AOT compiled code plus very performant SQL Server allowed them to run in fraction of the size comparable sites operated.

If they'd used open-source software rather than the Microsoft stack, they could have scaled horizontally without having to worry about buying more software licenses.

mrweasel 5y ago

Personally I'd rather manage a small number of large servers, compared to managing a large number of smaller ones. The licensing costs associated with Stack Overflow also can't been that large. Sure Microsoft software isn't cheap, but it's also not that expensive. The licensing cost is easily offset by staying on a technology stack their employees know.

kjgkjhfkjf 5y ago
> The licensing cost is easily offset by staying on a technology stack their employees know. Stack Overflow wasn't developed by an established software company. It was a completely new startup, founded by two high-profile (at the time) software commentators. They could have hired people to use any stack they wanted. While the state of web development wasn't what it is today, OSS stacks such as the LAMP stack were fairly well-understood and popular.
- mrweasel 5y ago
  That's a reasonable point, but still is the cost of the licens higher than the cost of one or two additional developers? Jeff Atwood was/is if I recall a pretty talented C# developer, so why onboard extra people. It's more than just their salary, there's a cost beyond that associated with hiring people. I'm not arguing that the licens isn't a concern, I just question how much of a concern it really is, compared to everything else.
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  The MS stack is affordable to developers working on developing countries and free for small products (with a lot of strings attached). Of course, the OSS stack costs nothing to acquire, is cheaper to admin, and will give you more functionality and easiness of use, but the MS one isn't some unaffordable monster like other proprietary ones.
- georgemcbay 5y ago
  Stack Overflow existed for a couple of years before taking any funding and it was developed by three people who were friends (Jeff Atwood, Jarrod Dixon and Geoff Dalgas) none of which were even getting paid regularly at the start and who were all primarily familiar with the .NET stack from previous jobs. It makes total sense why the tech is what it is. One could argue they could have shifted away from that stack since then, but one could also easily argue (very convincingly to anyone who has ever been involved with any significant project rewrite) "but... why?".
darkwater 5y ago
> The licensing costs associated with Stack Overflow also can't been that large Because we went with the reliability of a full Microsoft stack—.NET, C#, and MSSQL—our costs grew with the number of instances. Each server required a new license They literally mention license costs as an architecture driving constraint.
- wwefwe2323g 5y ago
  It's probably only costs for SQL Server, because anything else (ASP.NET, .NET, C#, etc.) is free and open source.
  - reificator 5y ago
    Stack Overflow predates any of those being open source.
  - severino 5y ago
    You couldn't run ASP.NET in Linux back then, so you had to pay for a Windows license, too.
  - forty 5y ago
    Wouldn't they have to pay for IIS as well? (Not mentioning Windows itself?)
    - mrweasel 5y ago
      Windows server yes, you pay for that, but IIS comes bundled.
- mrweasel 5y ago
  Sorry, I wasn't making that clear. It's not that it isn't a factor, they clearly think it is. The question is how big a factor is it really? My experience is that the licens is less of an issue, compared to the time and resources you'd otherwise need to redesign everything. When Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky started Stack Overflow they had a podcast. In that podcast Joel repeatably argued that hardware wasn't that expensive, compared to Jeffs time. His argument was that buying a larger server and scaling that way was much more cost-effective. I think that's still true, to a point, even if you didn't have the licensing cost.

pjmlp 5y ago

Software licenses are usually peanuts versus developer salaries and overall infrastructure costs of the whole company.

tomnipotent 5y ago
Agreed. It's always the people not paying for things that seem to be complaining about paying for things.
5e92cb50239222b 5y ago
Depends on where you live. Certainly not peanuts here. Edit: I know that if you spent your whole life in California it can be hard to believe that in some places junior developers make $250 a month (senior more than that, but typically less than $1k a month), so a single Windows Server license buys you four months of work of a single junior dev (however unproductive it may be), or 1-1.5 months of a senior dev's work. In my current place of work a few years back I started a strong push towards Linux and as much FOSS as possible, and over some time (as new projects were written and some legacy stuff re-written) it resulted in a massive reduction of total operation costs. I didn't expect any other reaction, though. You understand our realities better than us.

p_l 5y ago

They also commented that the licenses paid for themselves in reduced hw spend, as AOT compiled code plus very performant SQL Server allowed them to run in fraction of the size comparable sites operated.