> "Would Google or Facebook be viable if they had to pay Microsoft (or Sun) a license per server." Google and Facebook could afford to pay for expensive server

> "Would Google or Facebook be viable if they had to pay Microsoft (or Sun) a license per server." Google and Facebook could afford to pay for expensive servers, even more expensive datacenters to house them in, and fat compensation packages to their employees and execs, so obviously yes. Plenty of industries exist that have high capex costs and manage to get off the ground just fine. Continuing to give away free software to startups with millions of VC dollars raised that are growing to billion dollar businesses no longer makes sense.