For the sake of balance I will also offer a counter-point: Microsoft has quality server stack.
* C# is making progress towards python in friction-free coding
* .NET has great performance and decent set of libraries
* Visual Studio is a good IDE for small-medium projects
* Windows Server 2008 is a modern, solid OS. It's also reasonably priced
- Web Edition (which is what this crowd cares about the most) is about $400-$450 if memory serves.
* You can also have pay-as-you-go http://www.microsoft.com/serviceproviders/licensing/default.mspx
- The point implies (correctly, I think) that Python still is ahead.
- I'd be willing to argue the "decent set of libraries" point but the .NET libraries still can't compare to those available for perl, python, et al. And .NET only runs on Windows computers (Mono notwithstanding, but installation and maintenance of Mono is still a significant drag on the workload.)
- Server 2008 may be the best OS in the MS world now, but the quality and price still lag far behind Linux/BSD, particularly considering the anti-features (licensing and DRM overhead, for example) of MS OSes.
- You can also think of Ubuntu as having a pay-as-you-go option: Purchase price: free. Pay-as-you-go: free.
Care to back that "DRM overhead" up with data? I have measured performance of win2008 vs win2003, there is certainly no degradation, and there was no DRM in 2003.
agreed - all the above stuffs helps you to build new products but then you need customers to buy it and if they dont put money in your pocket because they want something that is cross platform and open source then these stuff won't sell or help you to survive. MS has to change the attitude and the path - just like they have to bow down to ODF couple of days a go they have to do the same with all their products.
In other words, you are saying that increasingly pervasive connectivity adds a lot more emphasis on interoperability and the good old lock-in is not as convincing anymore. I'll buy that.
