Comment by kogir | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kogir | Hacker News Reader

I'm one of Loopt's co-founders. Loopt uses Microsoft's stack (the reasons why are off topic here), and was licensing Windows Server, SQL Server, and Visual Studio through the SPLA program before BizSpark was available. We joined BizSpark right when it launched.

BizSpark consists primarily of two things: (1) a one-on-one contact to provide advice, to arrange partnership opportunities (marketing, etc), and to provide introductions to the Microsoft product teams as needed; and (2) free software licenses (which you get to keep at the end of the program). Loopt has also received other benefits, like access to their compatibility labs, conference passes, etc.

With BizSpark, Microsoft is confident enough in the quality of their offering that there's no commitment. You chose to use as much or as little of what is offered as you want, and there is zero pressure. We make use of various open source technologies[1]. It's not a problem. Also, at the end of the program they offer an extremely generous graduation offer[2] with no financial obligation.

After that, Microsoft's volume licensing is reasonable[3], the tools are well documented, and everything works as expected. Their stack is predictable, consistent, and dependable. If you want to be able to focus on your product instead of the tools you're using[4], then the Microsoft stack is great. Note: It's cheaper to have your tools work than to hire someone on salary to maintain and debug them.

[1] Ubuntu, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Ruby, Rails, etc.

[2] http://www.bizspark.com/Programs/Pages/GraduationOffer.aspx I can't discuss the details of Loopt's custom offer (we exceed the standard usage by a fair amount), but we'll be much better off after BizSpark than we were before. Microsoft has been very generous.

[3] See the SPLA program: http://www.microsoft.com/hosting/en/us/licensing/splabenefit...

[4] Not that they aren't extensible if needed. Back before ASP.Net MVC and WCF (and before Thrift, Protocol Buffers, and Rails) we wrote a ton of our own custom web and RPC tooling. ASP.Net is actually really nice but gets a bad rap because of web forms (which you don't have to use, and have improved substantially in the latest release). IIS 7 rocks as a transport agnostic application server, and can do MSMQ, TCP, UDP and more (it's extensible) in addition to HTTP.

> the tools are well documented, and everything works as expected. Their stack is predictable, consistent, and dependable. If you want to be able to focus on your product instead of the tools you're using[4], then the Microsoft stack is great. Note: It's cheaper to have your tools work than to hire someone on salary to maintain and debug them.

I don't doubt all you say is true. But consider someone (like me for example) with a Unixy skill-set. I know PHP, MySQL, PhpMyAdmin, Python, Django, Unix text processing tools, etc, and while the MS equivalents may well be very good, when you factor in my time learning to use them, I'm not going to be as productive.

One of the reasons I know all these tools is that getting started is simply sudo apt-get install whatever and I'm off. If MS want a higher uptake of their developer tools, they might make them as easy to get at as that.

I understand that with BizSpark I can use Microsoft's tools without paying much money. But there's a bureaucratic process to getting on the BizSpark program, which I'm guessing takes days or weeks to achieve. By comparison, sudo apt-get install takes seconds.

And that's why I'm using Unix-based tools in my startup.

You've created a nice little strawman there.

Microsoft offers free versions of their developer tools with the various Visual Studio Express editions and Sql Server Express.

If you're looking into more enterprise-y software, Microsoft offers free time-limited versions of pretty much all their server and productivity software.

It's not a straw-man. To get that free version, I've got to go to MSDN, register, jump through a bunch of hoops, download some way-too-big installer, run a long installation process, reboot a couple times.. I mean, not that I would ever think of pirating software from a giant corporation that wouldn't even notice the lost revenue, but bittorrent is only very slightly more work than all of that.

apt-get is a whole different plane of ease. It adds about a 3-second fixed-cost to trying a new tool.

Have you ever actually done it? The process of "fill out a form once," hit the Download button and walk away then come back an hour later to answer a few setup questions with Visual Studio is far from the onerous task you make it seem.

I'm no MS fanboy -- my current side project is PHP/LAMP all the way, but I have made money with their free tools.

And if their stuff doesn't work as expected? "Sorry, you are not paying customer, so buzz off" or "sorry, but not enough paying customers want that fixed. You are minority, your money is worthless, so buzz off". While with Free Software you can have your people fix it, or hire consultant. I don't believe in that Bill Gates' ( http://www.cantrip.org/nobugs.html ) "Microsoft code has no bugs" religious gospel. All software has bugs, except Free one can get fixed.

So if I wanted to I could just download Visual Studio Express for C#, and there's no catch or anything? (That's useful information, I might do it)

Correct. There are free versions of VS for C#, Web, etc.

Check out the Web Platform Installer (http://www.microsoft.com/web/downloads/platform.aspx) it is a close approximation of apt-get install for the Microsoft web stack (ASP.NET, SQL Server, IIS, VS Express)

Sure, but it's less than a thousandth the size, and MS still needs you to restart the whole userspace, kernel, and machine firmware when you install software for some bizarre reason.

Upgrading MongoDB is a five second job. Upgrading SQL server is nightmarish and scary.

Odd downmod. Does someone think the web platform installer has more apps than APT? Or just more than a thousandth? If so, you should probably have checked the size of APT any time in the last 12 years (I'm not sure about before then).

Or do they not believe Windows requires OS restarts anymore (as of Windows 2008R2 it still does, for Microsoft apps too)? Try setting up a server with Office Web apps - it's about five complete OS restarts.

Why does Loopt use a Microsoft stack?

A compelling discussion of my reasons won't fit in a comment. Perhaps I'll do a blog post in January.

If you want to know more before then feel free to email (in my profile).

I'll await the blog post; I can't be the only one who's interested the know the motivations. And for the record, I agree that it's the practical results that matter (for those who would criticize an OS choice). We're doing "embarrassing" things with what amounts to an EAV/graph database built on top of MySQL (with all the vertices in-memory), but we're incredibly happy with our results.

Are you guys BizSpark or BizSpark One?

We just graduated from BizSpark One, but are still in BizSpark for one more year.

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