Looks like your right on this point.  In my day job we use the even more rare "per device" licensing structure so it wasn't an area I was that familiar with.   Still I guess this proves your larger point that Microsoft licensing makes everything overly complex. 



Agree 256 was a poor example.  Beyond 64GB of RAM (today future versions tend to increase based on Moore's law) it gets very expensive.  I think part of the problem is that Microsoft has no license specifically designed for use as a website backend.  It means their existing licenses are either too restrictive or too expensive.  There would be real value if Microsoft both simplified their licensing and offered a "web server core" version dropping most of the corporate bakend functions and just provide a high memory, high compute platform for webservers.   .... I am not holding my breath.   I guess Azure may be an option I have never done testing to see how responsive their database in the cloud can be to very high loads.


Yeah I can see why you would remember it then.


I agree there is value in open platforms and SQL Server is one of Microsofts most expensive and most restricted products.  I think this got somewhat sidetracked (partially my fault).  The original claim (not by you) was that asp.net doesn't scale and is expensive.  asp.net can use any RDBMS as a backend and is highly scalable.  For a new startup SQL Server is likely the easiest route as there is going to be some skills overlap but beyond 64GB or 16 cores I agree there is significant cost.  It is something a startup would need to consider.

As a personal note:
To avoid vendor lock in whenever possible I try to keep the database code as ANSI SQL compliant as possible to allow a "backdoor" by keeping the migration costs & complexity to a minimum.