4 ms·

Really people? You guys are engineers by trade (and good engineers, at that, no?) and you find licensing daunting? Let's assume you are out of BizSpark, which

by gm 15y ago

Really people? You guys are engineers by trade (and good engineers, at that, no?) and you find licensing daunting? Let's assume you are out of BizSpark, which gives you what you need for free. Now you have a list of licenses to acquire. What I did last was to call CDW, they put me in touch with their MS licensing guy which actually looks at this stuff full time, he took our info down and simplified our options and it was a quick decision after that. This is just superfluous complaining, IMO. It's not that hard. And activation was not a big deal with volume licensing. Plus activation issues are a one-time things.

cbs 15y ago
Its not that they're hard per se, they're just another pain in the ass, especially when the alternative is a proven technology obtainable with a no-bullshit grab from a repository and then can be used whenever wherever for whatever.
- gm 15y ago
  Exact same thing can be said about "just start to use right away" by experienced .NET people. Which is the point of the article: It's much more culture than actual tangible differences/superiority.
robocat 15y ago
I am an engineer, and a founder of a small company using Windows and SQL Server. The licences are a time sucking headache - mindless legal crap, hidden liabilities, and confusing interdependencies. The BizSpark stuff is the worst (read it carefully: what you can do with it is VERY limited compared with what the marketing materials imply you can use it for).
- gm 15y ago
  Admittedly when things got stupid (as they can with SQL Server CALs) we just bought CPU licenses and moved on. Anyway, I still don't see licensing as that difficult. Maybe just a difference of opinions, which is ok. In the grand scheme of things (IMO again) licensing costs are infinitesimally small compared to, say, choosing the wrong system architect, or not taking into account scale requirements, hiring an idiot programmer, etc.
easp 15y ago
Microsoft has put a lot of effort into structuring their licensing to maximize their profits. One of the techniques they've used is to make the licensing complex enough that people over-pay to be on the safe side. Sounds like you took the path of least resistance with Microsoft licensing, and may have paid significantly more for the privilege. Maybe that was the right business decision for you, but its hardly a refutation of people who decide that open source licensing is a lot less hassle: No BizSpark application to fill-out, no fear of expensive licensing gotchas once they outgrow BizSpark.
- gm 15y ago
  Hrrmmm... I take the path of least resistance on everything. Why take the path of increased resistance? As long as you do not betray the long-term goal, the path of least resistance is absolutely the one to take. Always. Keeping on-topic: To a Windows-experienced team, the path of least resistance is to stay on Windows, even with its baggage. Same can be said for every other platform: Ruby guys, stay with Ruby all things being equal, and so on. PHP guy tasked with building a high-performance socket server? The path of least resistance given the goal is probably to switch to another platform for this project. EDIT: About MS maximizing profit: By definition, that's what a business does. Which business does not maximize profits?
  - pm90 15y ago
    maximizing profit from clever scheming is different from maximizing profit from innovating. maybe this is the cultural difference that was being talked about in the article
  - easp 15y ago
    I won't bother arguing with the received dogma of neo-classic economics and accept your premise that: that businesses strive to maximize profits, and that they should do so. That wasn't my point. My point is that microsoft maximizes profits by making licensing so complicated that a significant percentage of their customer base over-pay for licensing rather than take the risk of being under-licensed. Since you took the path of least resistance, you may have overpaid for licensing. If your goal, as a business, is to maximize profits, well, then, you've worked against your long-term goal. It may be that the cost of overpaying microsoft for licenses was cheaper than the opportunity cost of figuring out how to pay less for licenses. Which brings me back to my main point, it is no disgrace, as an engineer, to decide that Microsoft licensing is a problem better avoided.

by gm 15y ago

cbs 15y ago

Its not that they're hard per se, they're just another pain in the ass, especially when the alternative is a proven technology obtainable with a no-bullshit grab from a repository and then can be used whenever wherever for whatever.

gm 15y ago
Exact same thing can be said about "just start to use right away" by experienced .NET people. Which is the point of the article: It's much more culture than actual tangible differences/superiority.

robocat 15y ago

I am an engineer, and a founder of a small company using Windows and SQL Server. The licences are a time sucking headache - mindless legal crap, hidden liabilities, and confusing interdependencies. The BizSpark stuff is the worst (read it carefully: what you can do with it is VERY limited compared with what the marketing materials imply you can use it for).

gm 15y ago
Admittedly when things got stupid (as they can with SQL Server CALs) we just bought CPU licenses and moved on. Anyway, I still don't see licensing as that difficult. Maybe just a difference of opinions, which is ok. In the grand scheme of things (IMO again) licensing costs are infinitesimally small compared to, say, choosing the wrong system architect, or not taking into account scale requirements, hiring an idiot programmer, etc.

easp 15y ago

Microsoft has put a lot of effort into structuring their licensing to maximize their profits. One of the techniques they've used is to make the licensing complex enough that people over-pay to be on the safe side. Sounds like you took the path of least resistance with Microsoft licensing, and may have paid significantly more for the privilege. Maybe that was the right business decision for you, but its hardly a refutation of people who decide that open source licensing is a lot less hassle: No BizSpark application to fill-out, no fear of expensive licensing gotchas once they outgrow BizSpark.

gm 15y ago
Hrrmmm... I take the path of least resistance on everything. Why take the path of increased resistance? As long as you do not betray the long-term goal, the path of least resistance is absolutely the one to take. Always. Keeping on-topic: To a Windows-experienced team, the path of least resistance is to stay on Windows, even with its baggage. Same can be said for every other platform: Ruby guys, stay with Ruby all things being equal, and so on. PHP guy tasked with building a high-performance socket server? The path of least resistance given the goal is probably to switch to another platform for this project. EDIT: About MS maximizing profit: By definition, that's what a business does. Which business does not maximize profits?
- pm90 15y ago
  maximizing profit from clever scheming is different from maximizing profit from innovating. maybe this is the cultural difference that was being talked about in the article
- easp 15y ago
  I won't bother arguing with the received dogma of neo-classic economics and accept your premise that: that businesses strive to maximize profits, and that they should do so. That wasn't my point. My point is that microsoft maximizes profits by making licensing so complicated that a significant percentage of their customer base over-pay for licensing rather than take the risk of being under-licensed. Since you took the path of least resistance, you may have overpaid for licensing. If your goal, as a business, is to maximize profits, well, then, you've worked against your long-term goal. It may be that the cost of overpaying microsoft for licenses was cheaper than the opportunity cost of figuring out how to pay less for licenses. Which brings me back to my main point, it is no disgrace, as an engineer, to decide that Microsoft licensing is a problem better avoided.