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> The tooling is expensive (Pro, Ultimate) or crippled (Express). Visual Studio Community 2013 (and 2015) are completely free and nearly fully featured. Gone a

by joeax 11y ago

> The tooling is expensive (Pro, Ultimate) or crippled (Express). Visual Studio Community 2013 (and 2015) are completely free and nearly fully featured. Gone are the days of Express being a super lightweight VS IDE. I used to buy Pro for side work but now I can get by with Community.

dragonwriter 11y ago
> Visual Studio Community 2013 (and 2015) are completely free and nearly fully featured. But have licensing terms which limit the contexts in which they can (legally) be used. > Gone are the days of Express being a super lightweight VS IDE. Express is still a super lightweight VS IDE. Community may eliminate most of the use cases for Express, since most of the cases where it makes sense to use Express may be places where Community is an available, per the licensing restrictions, and better choice.
moistgorilla 11y ago
the Windows Server Licenses are the expensive part
- DenisM 11y ago
  If you're using a cloud hosting, such as AWS EC2, the added expense of Windows is around 30%. Nothing terribly expensive about that. And you also get credits from Bizspak, that could be used to apply to offset AWS licensing.
  - eterm 11y ago
    But god help you if you need SQL server beyond what express provides. (Web is OK but expensive, "standard" or enterprise? Now that hurts)
    - DenisM 11y ago
      > god help you if you need SQL server beyond what express provides Too much drama. Here's pricing for m3.large: Red Hat: $0.193 Windows: $0.259 Win + SqlWeb: $0.367 Besides, you get several(?) free SQL licenses with BizSpark, if you're so inclined.
      - kogir 11y ago
        SQL Server Web Edition is not the same as Standard or Enterprise. The reason you use SQL Server instead of PostgreSQL is for Database Encryption, Analysis Services, AlwaysOn Availability Groups, etc. Web Edition won't even do mirroring. The cost is worth it if it saves you multiple employees worth of development work or administration overhead, and in my experience it does. The pricing is also (surprise!) negotiable. At Loopt, our annual software licensing cost was well under the cost of one developer, and this was before BizSpark.
        hobs 11y ago
        Basically, yep. But you can see why people get some sticker shock: $14,256 on their website for SQL Server 2014 enterprise (per core!) http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/products/sql-server/purchasing.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/products/sql-ser... However as you say, you could easily get a 50% discount on that without having a big SQL Server farm. No bizspark required.

by joeax 11y ago

dragonwriter 11y ago

> Visual Studio Community 2013 (and 2015) are completely free and nearly fully featured. But have licensing terms which limit the contexts in which they can (legally) be used. > Gone are the days of Express being a super lightweight VS IDE. Express is still a super lightweight VS IDE. Community may eliminate most of the use cases for Express, since most of the cases where it makes sense to use Express may be places where Community is an available, per the licensing restrictions, and better choice.

moistgorilla 11y ago

the Windows Server Licenses are the expensive part

DenisM 11y ago
If you're using a cloud hosting, such as AWS EC2, the added expense of Windows is around 30%. Nothing terribly expensive about that. And you also get credits from Bizspak, that could be used to apply to offset AWS licensing.
- eterm 11y ago
  But god help you if you need SQL server beyond what express provides. (Web is OK but expensive, "standard" or enterprise? Now that hurts)
  - DenisM 11y ago
    > god help you if you need SQL server beyond what express provides Too much drama. Here's pricing for m3.large: Red Hat: $0.193 Windows: $0.259 Win + SqlWeb: $0.367 Besides, you get several(?) free SQL licenses with BizSpark, if you're so inclined.
    - kogir 11y ago
      SQL Server Web Edition is not the same as Standard or Enterprise. The reason you use SQL Server instead of PostgreSQL is for Database Encryption, Analysis Services, AlwaysOn Availability Groups, etc. Web Edition won't even do mirroring. The cost is worth it if it saves you multiple employees worth of development work or administration overhead, and in my experience it does. The pricing is also (surprise!) negotiable. At Loopt, our annual software licensing cost was well under the cost of one developer, and this was before BizSpark.
      - hobs 11y ago
        Basically, yep. But you can see why people get some sticker shock: $14,256 on their website for SQL Server 2014 enterprise (per core!) http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/products/sql-server/purchasing.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/products/sql-ser... However as you say, you could easily get a 50% discount on that without having a big SQL Server farm. No bizspark required.