It should probably be clarified that you're talking primarily about start-up costs, and primarily about web applications. I think amortized over the long run, M

It should probably be clarified that you're talking primarily about start-up costs, and primarily about web applications. I think amortized over the long run, MS services can save you money (definitely at the enterprise level, less so with small teams). Not always, but I've seen many teams hack away on Python or Rails, and hit a giant wall about 80% of the way in. Enter a consultant to save the day (spoken as a past freelancer who charged pretty decent rates for this kind of work). Of course that can happen on the MS stack too, but you can get support from MS with MSDN. Volume MSDN licensing is not cheap (though, free with Bizspark), but considering you get a full suite of MS products it is a no-brainer when developing anything on the Microsoft stack. I think there's some debate left in regard to web applications, but when it comes to desktop software dev or SOA, there's not really a viable alternative. In the end, it costs good money, but you get really, really good development software. Also, I'd say that I'm more than willing to pay good money for VS, if it means not using Eclipse. I would easily lose $600 worth of time trying to get open source development tools to play well together. Microsoft's IDE technology is so far beyond anything in the FOSS world it's not even a debate anymore. Only mod it needs is Resharper. :)