License compliance with Microsoft software is a lot of trouble and risk, and it, more than the paper cost, is often the worst thing about using Microsoft stuff.

"Simple" scenarios like maintaining a warm replicated data center becomes a ridiculous exercise of license guessing, where every Microsoft rep tells you something different. Licensing newer instances of Sharepoint is simply a riot.

I'm not saying there aren't advantages, but it's nice as platform and system architects to plan out hardware and software and be done with it, and not get distracted for months discussing exactly which stack of licenses you need from Microsoft.

Or you could just ignore it and hope they don't come knocking. BizSpark is actually a great example where Microsoft encourages that -- the graduation benefits are in many ways incredibly vague (not to mention that the program duration and benefits are changing constantly). Right now when you graduate you get-

up to 4 Windows Servers (Standard Edition) and 2 SQL Servers (Standard Edition)

What does that mean? Per user/device copies of SQL Server, because that would be completely useless to any company serving the internet in any way. Two core copies, because again that's laughably anemic. What does it mean?

Yet almost no one actually talks about what it means because who cares, right? Until the day that the BSA comes knocking because a disgruntled former employee left a tip.