Quote from: DeathAndTaxes on January 28, 2013, 01:08:23 AM

paybitcoin ... not sure where you got your info

Sorry, this is mostly off the top of my head so it could be wrong.

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2) Your pricing but it is way off. Standard can be licensed per user (CAL) instead of per core which is much lower cost for applications like web backend datastore.

This is not correct, you still need to have one CAL for every user you plan to have then. It is called 'multiplexing' and is technically not usable with a website. See:

http://serverfault.com/questions/120276/how-are-sql-server-cals-counted
From the licensing info doc I posted:

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The Server+CAL licensing model provides the option to license users and/or devices and then have low cost access to incremental SQL Server deployments. However, for customers who cannot count users or require premium database capabilities...

Pretty sure if they are worried about having you count users then a website on the Internet is fairly incompatible with with the Server+CAL model. Of course you would have to call MS licensing to be sure (bleh.)

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3) SQL Server 2012 Standard does have a 64 GB memory limit but honestly the number of databases in the world affected by that is pretty small. Hardly a deal killer for a startup. To my knowledge no Bitcoin venture uses a larger database than that (startup or note). Very few companies in the world do and they tend to be very large companies which are spending six figures on salaries anyways.

Sure, but in your earlier example you posted a 256 GB RAM server with the example that 'RAM is cheap.' I agree that everything is pretty small now, but to get a server with mega RAM and find out you can't use it all because you need to pay MS more $$ is very frustrating.

4, 5 i agree with... 6 (32G RAM limit) bit me personally...

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Now $1,800 isn't free but hardly impossible for a startup and closed source projects require a license for MySQL too. Beyond 64GB (today) on SQL Server 2012 gets significantly more expensive as 2012 Enterprise no longer has a server + CAL option (which is optimal for web applications). You are talking about $5K per core so if you need more than 64GB it can be very costly. The number of databases needing that level of performance are very few and well outside the realm of startups.

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It's great as a technical solution, but has a bad value proposition as a web startup solution.

Which is why bizspark was created. Three years of essentially unlimited licenses. Then a graduation with conversion of licenses at 70% to 90% off retail. Any company older than three years is hardly a startup.Can it be done on other platforms for less? Sure but there is no reason for FUD.

Still asp.net can be use MySql as the datastore. As you pointed out the windows license is downright free compared to SQL Server. Microsoft's big competitor for SQL Server is Oracle and there pricing makes SQL Server look downright cheap.

Yes, there was a reason I used only PostgreSQL in my earlier post, MySQL is pretty much dead ever since it was purchased by Oracle. PostgreSQL is completely Free, with almost all of the features of something like MSSQL Enterprise and I can see many many companies starting to migrate from MSSQL or even Oracle in the near term future.

It is wonderful not having to think about licensing restrictions, to be able to use the full capacity of your hardware at all times (buy a 256 GB RAM server? why not?), and not have arbitrary features locked out. And to not worry about things like the cost of CALs jumping 25% randomly with 2012 or BizSpark's 3 year grace period that runs out and leaves you paying MS for the rest of the company's existence. Sad