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Comment by petedoyle | Hacker News Reader

"Essentially, the cost differences have become moot"

No, not really. I specifically ruled out .NET because BizSpark expires after 3 years or >1 million USD in annual revenue (whichever comes first).

I just don't see a ton of advantage to running .NET/SQLServer/etc over something like Java/PostgreSQL/etc. I'm sure some .NET dev will disagree.

There's just so much flexibility in being able to spin up as many instances as I want without licensing restrictions. For example, a .NET deployment might require larger instances to decrease the per-machine licensing costs, whereas I can do whatever-the-hell-I-want with an open source stack.

BizSpark is free only if you expect to not be around in 3 years.

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BizSpark is free only if you expect to not be around in 3 years.

That's not really the point of BizSpark. It's to get you to the point where SW licenses aren't a huge expenditure. At my company we have a general policy on SW "If it will make you more productive -- buy it." No questions asked.

We spend over $200k/year on each developer. Almost no developer purchases $10k/year in SW, but if they did, it's really not that big of a cost for us. And if there's a small improvement in productivity it's worth it.

But for companies where everyone eats ramen, but only when on sale, the cost of licenses is a big deal. I've seen startups where they require each dev to buy their own machines. I've seen other startups that pay half their annual salary for the first year and then will double your salary the next year -- as a way to get out the gate with lower costs.

If MS SW has no value then it has no value if its free. But if it does have value then the license costs really aren't that substantial.

I agree that productivity trumps cost. Its clear that .NET and the rest of the MS stack (if you choose to use them) absolutely do provide value.

But so do Rails / Grails / Java / Django / MySQL / PostgreSQL / Redis / Cassandra / Linux / et al., with zero licensing cost (or headache), better deployment flexibility, and the ability to customize them or fix any bugs that are in your way.

Certainly arguments can be made one way or the other on which stack provides more value in terms of time/labor/skills/flexibility, etc.

That said, the article was much to quick to dismiss cost as a factor due to BizSpark.

To be clear, I'm not trying to argue which stack provides more value. I was really trying to say that one should pick which stack provides the most value for them (using whatever metrics give you and your team value). And then most likely just go with it. The SW costs are relatively minor.

I have a hard time believing that a company looked and said, "The .NET stack gives us more value, but lets save a few bucks and go with this other stack." Except for early-ramen startups.

My major point was that BizSpark tries take this issue off the table in the early days when you might be cost sensitive. But no value judgment between .NET and other stacks.

Completely agree.

To add to your point, from the BizSpark FAQ: " BizSpark software is for design, development, test, and demo only." You have no licence to use the software for any internal business use. E.g. sales guy can't use Office. The licence has so many catch-alls to prevent "abuse" that what you can do is rediculously limited.

Of course, the activated software is very useful, and obviously MS isn't actually enforcing the rules... [edit] so BizSpark can be very handy during first few years, but indeed you are punting a big licencing hassle (staff times number of VMs).

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