4 ms·

I'm just going on my gut here, but it's doubtful that many startups are using the MS stack. It's not for lack of a good IDE, community, or even language feature

I'm just going on my gut here, but it's doubtful that many startups are using the MS stack. It's not for lack of a good IDE, community, or even language features. It simply comes down to cost. There are a myriad of free or low cost alternatives that make the MS stack seem monolithic and unusable. Hell, I work for a company that had been using a MS product for years. We recently switched to PHP, and are likely to use Flask or Django and PostgreSQL for our next product.

daigoba66 14y ago
That's what http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/about/ http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/about/ is for. Free software licenses for 3 years. The catch is that you'll be then tied to the Microsoft platform. And afterwards you'll have the privileged of paying for licenses. And really for an established company it's not that expensive. Except for SQL Server Enterprise. They like to rob you blind on "Enterprise" licenses (which is what you need for the useful High Availability features).
- vyrotek 14y ago
  We did the BizSpark program and loved it. In fact, our 3 year period is almost up. I don't get why people think you end up stuck with having to buy a bunch of licenses. Azure has basically changed all that now. Just like any other cloud platform, you pay for what you use. Except in this case you get IIS, SQL Server and many other enterprise level services. In case anyone was curious, here is the email they send you at the end of the program. "Your graduation from the Microsoft BizSpark program is just one month away! The great news is that you can complete the graduation process in just three simple steps: Answer a few questions. Give us a little feedback. Get your licenses. The entire process takes just minutes. Since there are both business and technical questions, however, we do recommend both the CTO and the CEO take the time to go through the process together. If you complete the graduation process by your graduation date, you may keep and continue to use all the software you received as part of your BizSpark MSDN Subscription for development and testing purposes. If your startup has servers in production, you will have perpetual rights to your Windows and SQL Server software solution production licenses. And, we have removed the $100 exit fee for the BizSpark program."
  - michielvoo 14y ago
    It used to be the case that you had to either pay for the licenses or pay a $100 'exit fee'. I was under that impression still, but it must've changed recently? I guess Microsoft's idea is that if your company does graduate after three years, it's bound to buy upgrades and/or new licenses for the development tools somewhere in the near future. So the actual revenue is deferred to make the offer more attractive.
vyrotek 14y ago
There are many startups here on HackerNews that use .Net! We're one of them.
powertower 14y ago
The cost of MS software is a rounding error compared to the cost employees.

daigoba66 14y ago

That's what http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/about/ http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/about/ is for. Free software licenses for 3 years. The catch is that you'll be then tied to the Microsoft platform. And afterwards you'll have the privileged of paying for licenses. And really for an established company it's not that expensive. Except for SQL Server Enterprise. They like to rob you blind on "Enterprise" licenses (which is what you need for the useful High Availability features).

vyrotek 14y ago
We did the BizSpark program and loved it. In fact, our 3 year period is almost up. I don't get why people think you end up stuck with having to buy a bunch of licenses. Azure has basically changed all that now. Just like any other cloud platform, you pay for what you use. Except in this case you get IIS, SQL Server and many other enterprise level services. In case anyone was curious, here is the email they send you at the end of the program. "Your graduation from the Microsoft BizSpark program is just one month away! The great news is that you can complete the graduation process in just three simple steps: Answer a few questions. Give us a little feedback. Get your licenses. The entire process takes just minutes. Since there are both business and technical questions, however, we do recommend both the CTO and the CEO take the time to go through the process together. If you complete the graduation process by your graduation date, you may keep and continue to use all the software you received as part of your BizSpark MSDN Subscription for development and testing purposes. If your startup has servers in production, you will have perpetual rights to your Windows and SQL Server software solution production licenses. And, we have removed the $100 exit fee for the BizSpark program."
- michielvoo 14y ago
  It used to be the case that you had to either pay for the licenses or pay a $100 'exit fee'. I was under that impression still, but it must've changed recently? I guess Microsoft's idea is that if your company does graduate after three years, it's bound to buy upgrades and/or new licenses for the development tools somewhere in the near future. So the actual revenue is deferred to make the offer more attractive.

vyrotek 14y ago

There are many startups here on HackerNews that use .Net! We're one of them.

powertower 14y ago

The cost of MS software is a rounding error compared to the cost employees.