[jonursenbach]

They're fairly tightly integrated into the MS stack and it'd be an incredible undertaking to migrate to anything else.

[th5]

you would think MS would cut them a super deal on licensing, being that S.O. is such a major site utilizing and promoting their platform, (and its demographics match who they'd want to promote to). If S.O. goes down or has problems due to a SQL server issue like this, (or them not affording another license) that looks pretty bad.

[dan_b]

I believe Joel said that software licenses were a rounding error in the grand scheme of things.

[bunderbunder]

I'm inclined to agree. If you have to spend any time at all figuring out how to fit the cost of a SQL Server license into your business plan, that's the entrepreneurial equivalent of a code smell.

[justincormack]

Not sure MS cares enough about SQL server. They would probably throw money at them to move to Azure though.