7 ms·

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 Ov

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.

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.