Web site dev cost (second attempt)
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Around a week ago I asked this question , but unfortunately I did not give enough details to get it answered. So, first of all I really appreciate all those of you guys who tried to answer my enquiry anyway, I'm always amazed by the good will of people of CP lounge.:) So here is the question: I'm interested in a auction like website, build upon JSP or PHP with a database support. Site layout and business logic are already existent, but it has to be coded. Basically , it is supposed to be something similar to eBay. How expensive ,approximately, can it be, to hire someone to do the job. If it is very expensive: how long will it take , someone without any web development experience (myself) to study the technology and create the website (I can dedicate few hours a day to study).
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Around a week ago I asked this question , but unfortunately I did not give enough details to get it answered. So, first of all I really appreciate all those of you guys who tried to answer my enquiry anyway, I'm always amazed by the good will of people of CP lounge.:) So here is the question: I'm interested in a auction like website, build upon JSP or PHP with a database support. Site layout and business logic are already existent, but it has to be coded. Basically , it is supposed to be something similar to eBay. How expensive ,approximately, can it be, to hire someone to do the job. If it is very expensive: how long will it take , someone without any web development experience (myself) to study the technology and create the website (I can dedicate few hours a day to study).
You really need to break the problem down in to smaller chunks. I won't estimate anything that I know will take me any more than a day to complete. I keep breaking the problem dowin in to smaller and smaller chunks until I'm happy that the estimate will be accurate. For something similar to eBay you have many many features. User can sign up for an account User can receive a confirmation sign up email. User can log in User can request new password/forgotten password via email. User can search User can browse search results User can browse by category User can view individual auction entry User can bid on auction User can receive email confirmation on auction bid User can receive email of auction outbid notice User can receive email of success or failure of auction when it closes User can pay for successful auction User can receive payment for successful auction User can create auction listing Site can bill user for auction listing Site can bill user for percentage of sale User can view their auctions User can view auctions they are bidding on User can "watch" an auction User can sign up for email notification of matching search items etc.etc.etc. Each of the above would take days or weeks to implement, unit test, debug, integrate, system test, end-to-end test and so on. Add to that the fact that you have to specify it in detail (although a good developer can help guide you in this). The company I work for charges between £350 to £550 per man-day of effort on a project. Does this help give you an idea of cost?
My: Blog | Photos "Man who stand on hill with mouth open will wait long time for roast duck to drop in." -- Confucious
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You really need to break the problem down in to smaller chunks. I won't estimate anything that I know will take me any more than a day to complete. I keep breaking the problem dowin in to smaller and smaller chunks until I'm happy that the estimate will be accurate. For something similar to eBay you have many many features. User can sign up for an account User can receive a confirmation sign up email. User can log in User can request new password/forgotten password via email. User can search User can browse search results User can browse by category User can view individual auction entry User can bid on auction User can receive email confirmation on auction bid User can receive email of auction outbid notice User can receive email of success or failure of auction when it closes User can pay for successful auction User can receive payment for successful auction User can create auction listing Site can bill user for auction listing Site can bill user for percentage of sale User can view their auctions User can view auctions they are bidding on User can "watch" an auction User can sign up for email notification of matching search items etc.etc.etc. Each of the above would take days or weeks to implement, unit test, debug, integrate, system test, end-to-end test and so on. Add to that the fact that you have to specify it in detail (although a good developer can help guide you in this). The company I work for charges between £350 to £550 per man-day of effort on a project. Does this help give you an idea of cost?
My: Blog | Photos "Man who stand on hill with mouth open will wait long time for roast duck to drop in." -- Confucious
Thank you Colin. As far as I know north American prices are somewhat different from mentioned by you, so I would really appreciate if anyone could give me approximate north American (Canada) prices applicable to such a project, as well as mention how complicated it would be to do it myself. Thanks again.
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Thank you Colin. As far as I know north American prices are somewhat different from mentioned by you, so I would really appreciate if anyone could give me approximate north American (Canada) prices applicable to such a project, as well as mention how complicated it would be to do it myself. Thanks again.
Depending on the number of people working on the project, upwards of US$4,000 a week/per man. Roughly 20 weeks, for an experienced single developer, not including graphic artists.
Qualificiation: 20 weeks to get an Alpha up an running! This doesn't include the "nice-to-have" features...For someone such as yourself, a self-described newbie to web programming, probably well over a year to get v1.00 up on the wire, completely stress-tested to handle a good-sized user load. I say over a year because there are many techniques and pitfalls you'll have to learn along the way as you find an appropriate technique or pattern to fit certain needs of your application under certain loads. The choices you make will ultimately change when you find that a method that looks and works great on paper or with a couple of users trying it fails miserably when you throw 500 requests/second at it. Then, there are the security holes/concerns... The load on the SQL Server(s), other miscellaneous bottlenecks, ... Back to the drawing board, again, and again, and again, ... Until you, yourself, could justify charging $4,000 a week. Just my opinion... RageInTheMachine9532 "...a pungent, ghastly, stinky piece of cheese!" -- The Roaming Gnome -- modified at 16:36 Tuesday 11th October, 2005 -
Thank you Colin. As far as I know north American prices are somewhat different from mentioned by you, so I would really appreciate if anyone could give me approximate north American (Canada) prices applicable to such a project, as well as mention how complicated it would be to do it myself. Thanks again.
To do it right, $100,000++ with at least 2 developers working full time for 6+ months. Then you would have to spend at least that much per year to maintain the software and databases. As your system grows, so will the costs (dramatically). This does not include the hardware/bandwidth costs. This is just a conservative guess. Ebay has a ton of functionality.
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Around a week ago I asked this question , but unfortunately I did not give enough details to get it answered. So, first of all I really appreciate all those of you guys who tried to answer my enquiry anyway, I'm always amazed by the good will of people of CP lounge.:) So here is the question: I'm interested in a auction like website, build upon JSP or PHP with a database support. Site layout and business logic are already existent, but it has to be coded. Basically , it is supposed to be something similar to eBay. How expensive ,approximately, can it be, to hire someone to do the job. If it is very expensive: how long will it take , someone without any web development experience (myself) to study the technology and create the website (I can dedicate few hours a day to study).
sergeyv2002 wrote: Site layout and business logic are already existent, but it has to be coded. eBay is probably not the best example because eBay is a huge website. If you are talking about a site similar to http://www.liquidation.com/[^] then it's a little more doable. My guess is that you are looking at about anywhere between $30,000 to $80,000+ USD to build a site like liquidation.com unless you hire a team of college students to put it together. In that case you may be able to get it built for less than $10,000 USD. If you don't know much about writting code, then it would probably take you years to learn enough to build it at the rate of a few hours a day. You could learn enough to build a site like that in a few months if you spent every waking moment studying and writting code. There are other things that you should consider in building a site like that such as legal disclaimers and advertising, but I won't go there.
// TODO: code -
Around a week ago I asked this question , but unfortunately I did not give enough details to get it answered. So, first of all I really appreciate all those of you guys who tried to answer my enquiry anyway, I'm always amazed by the good will of people of CP lounge.:) So here is the question: I'm interested in a auction like website, build upon JSP or PHP with a database support. Site layout and business logic are already existent, but it has to be coded. Basically , it is supposed to be something similar to eBay. How expensive ,approximately, can it be, to hire someone to do the job. If it is very expensive: how long will it take , someone without any web development experience (myself) to study the technology and create the website (I can dedicate few hours a day to study).
Why jsp/php and not a more reliable and speedy framework like ASP.NET ? ( OK, exactly ASP.NET, no other framework comes close IMO, certainly not jsp ). sergeyv2002 wrote: If it is very expensive It can be - it would be mega cheap on a site like rentacoder, but I'd give you a 5% chance of success the first time, maybe 12% of success overall, and 86% chance of losing some or all of your money. You get what you pay for. sergeyv2002 wrote: long will it take , someone without any web development experience (myself) to study the technology and create the website (I can dedicate few hours a day to study). Depends on how quick you learn and what technologies you use. It's almost certainly not worth your while tho, you'd need to spend at least four months writing other stuff to get to a level of being able to start, and you'd be on a steep learning curve all the way through. I do a lot of contract work for people in other countries, I'm an Aussie, but I'm in Texas right now with a guy I've worked for since late last year. He wrote to me initially after seeing my image processing articles on this site. Why don't you look for articles that would suggest that the author can do this job, and then approach them ? Or better yet, read answers in the web forums for an idea ( I do heaps of ASP.NET work myself, but I have no ASP.NET articles here, for example ). A simple auction site shouldn't take an experienced developer long to do. I'd certainly find someone and get them to do a bare bones site, and then build on it incrementally, so that you break things up into reasonable chunks and every time you make a payment, you get something that visibly works. That also means you get some functionality if you lose your developer at some point, and not a bunch of half finished junk. If you want some idea of what sort of things you should ask a developer, by all means, I'd be glad to help. Christian Graus - Microsoft MVP - C++
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Depending on the number of people working on the project, upwards of US$4,000 a week/per man. Roughly 20 weeks, for an experienced single developer, not including graphic artists.
Qualificiation: 20 weeks to get an Alpha up an running! This doesn't include the "nice-to-have" features...For someone such as yourself, a self-described newbie to web programming, probably well over a year to get v1.00 up on the wire, completely stress-tested to handle a good-sized user load. I say over a year because there are many techniques and pitfalls you'll have to learn along the way as you find an appropriate technique or pattern to fit certain needs of your application under certain loads. The choices you make will ultimately change when you find that a method that looks and works great on paper or with a couple of users trying it fails miserably when you throw 500 requests/second at it. Then, there are the security holes/concerns... The load on the SQL Server(s), other miscellaneous bottlenecks, ... Back to the drawing board, again, and again, and again, ... Until you, yourself, could justify charging $4,000 a week. Just my opinion... RageInTheMachine9532 "...a pungent, ghastly, stinky piece of cheese!" -- The Roaming Gnome -- modified at 16:36 Tuesday 11th October, 2005Damn - $4000 a week ? Where do I sign on ? Actually, I take that back, my employer charges me out for $4500 a week. I just don't get to see anywhere near that. Graphic artists are another issue that people often overlook ( I forgot to mention them ) Christian Graus - Microsoft MVP - C++
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Damn - $4000 a week ? Where do I sign on ? Actually, I take that back, my employer charges me out for $4500 a week. I just don't get to see anywhere near that. Graphic artists are another issue that people often overlook ( I forgot to mention them ) Christian Graus - Microsoft MVP - C++
Christian Graus wrote: Damn - $4000 a week ? Where do I sign on ? Actually, I take that back, my employer charges me out for $4500 a week. I'm in the same boat. I don't see in my paycheck anywhere near what my employer's bill rate is for me. RageInTheMachine9532 "...a pungent, ghastly, stinky piece of cheese!" -- The Roaming Gnome
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Why jsp/php and not a more reliable and speedy framework like ASP.NET ? ( OK, exactly ASP.NET, no other framework comes close IMO, certainly not jsp ). sergeyv2002 wrote: If it is very expensive It can be - it would be mega cheap on a site like rentacoder, but I'd give you a 5% chance of success the first time, maybe 12% of success overall, and 86% chance of losing some or all of your money. You get what you pay for. sergeyv2002 wrote: long will it take , someone without any web development experience (myself) to study the technology and create the website (I can dedicate few hours a day to study). Depends on how quick you learn and what technologies you use. It's almost certainly not worth your while tho, you'd need to spend at least four months writing other stuff to get to a level of being able to start, and you'd be on a steep learning curve all the way through. I do a lot of contract work for people in other countries, I'm an Aussie, but I'm in Texas right now with a guy I've worked for since late last year. He wrote to me initially after seeing my image processing articles on this site. Why don't you look for articles that would suggest that the author can do this job, and then approach them ? Or better yet, read answers in the web forums for an idea ( I do heaps of ASP.NET work myself, but I have no ASP.NET articles here, for example ). A simple auction site shouldn't take an experienced developer long to do. I'd certainly find someone and get them to do a bare bones site, and then build on it incrementally, so that you break things up into reasonable chunks and every time you make a payment, you get something that visibly works. That also means you get some functionality if you lose your developer at some point, and not a bunch of half finished junk. If you want some idea of what sort of things you should ask a developer, by all means, I'd be glad to help. Christian Graus - Microsoft MVP - C++
Christian Graus wrote: but I'd give you a 5% chance of success the first time, maybe 12% of success overall, and 86% chance of losing some or all of your money 103%? :) Never forget: "Stay kul and happy" (I.A.)
David's thoughts / dnhsoftware.org / MyHTMLTidy -
Why jsp/php and not a more reliable and speedy framework like ASP.NET ? ( OK, exactly ASP.NET, no other framework comes close IMO, certainly not jsp ). sergeyv2002 wrote: If it is very expensive It can be - it would be mega cheap on a site like rentacoder, but I'd give you a 5% chance of success the first time, maybe 12% of success overall, and 86% chance of losing some or all of your money. You get what you pay for. sergeyv2002 wrote: long will it take , someone without any web development experience (myself) to study the technology and create the website (I can dedicate few hours a day to study). Depends on how quick you learn and what technologies you use. It's almost certainly not worth your while tho, you'd need to spend at least four months writing other stuff to get to a level of being able to start, and you'd be on a steep learning curve all the way through. I do a lot of contract work for people in other countries, I'm an Aussie, but I'm in Texas right now with a guy I've worked for since late last year. He wrote to me initially after seeing my image processing articles on this site. Why don't you look for articles that would suggest that the author can do this job, and then approach them ? Or better yet, read answers in the web forums for an idea ( I do heaps of ASP.NET work myself, but I have no ASP.NET articles here, for example ). A simple auction site shouldn't take an experienced developer long to do. I'd certainly find someone and get them to do a bare bones site, and then build on it incrementally, so that you break things up into reasonable chunks and every time you make a payment, you get something that visibly works. That also means you get some functionality if you lose your developer at some point, and not a bunch of half finished junk. If you want some idea of what sort of things you should ask a developer, by all means, I'd be glad to help. Christian Graus - Microsoft MVP - C++
I wouldn't call PHP unreliable in comparison to ASP.NET. I would say it is the other way around, sadly. regards, Paul Watson South Africa Colib and ilikecameras. K(arl) wrote: oh, and BTW, CHRISTIAN ISN'T A PARADOX, HE IS A TASMANIAN!
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Why jsp/php and not a more reliable and speedy framework like ASP.NET ? ( OK, exactly ASP.NET, no other framework comes close IMO, certainly not jsp ). sergeyv2002 wrote: If it is very expensive It can be - it would be mega cheap on a site like rentacoder, but I'd give you a 5% chance of success the first time, maybe 12% of success overall, and 86% chance of losing some or all of your money. You get what you pay for. sergeyv2002 wrote: long will it take , someone without any web development experience (myself) to study the technology and create the website (I can dedicate few hours a day to study). Depends on how quick you learn and what technologies you use. It's almost certainly not worth your while tho, you'd need to spend at least four months writing other stuff to get to a level of being able to start, and you'd be on a steep learning curve all the way through. I do a lot of contract work for people in other countries, I'm an Aussie, but I'm in Texas right now with a guy I've worked for since late last year. He wrote to me initially after seeing my image processing articles on this site. Why don't you look for articles that would suggest that the author can do this job, and then approach them ? Or better yet, read answers in the web forums for an idea ( I do heaps of ASP.NET work myself, but I have no ASP.NET articles here, for example ). A simple auction site shouldn't take an experienced developer long to do. I'd certainly find someone and get them to do a bare bones site, and then build on it incrementally, so that you break things up into reasonable chunks and every time you make a payment, you get something that visibly works. That also means you get some functionality if you lose your developer at some point, and not a bunch of half finished junk. If you want some idea of what sort of things you should ask a developer, by all means, I'd be glad to help. Christian Graus - Microsoft MVP - C++
Christian Graus wrote: Why jsp/php and not a more reliable and speedy framework like ASP.NET Because you can run a JSP server for free, as are the tools you can use to develop? Because JSP pages can be viewed on "non-Windows browers"? Because JSP is designed to be both platform and server independent when ASP relies mostly on Microsoft technologies?
The great error of nearly all studies of war has been to consider war as an episode in foreign policies, when it is an act of interior politics - Simone Weil Fold with us! ¤ flickr
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Thank you Colin. As far as I know north American prices are somewhat different from mentioned by you, so I would really appreciate if anyone could give me approximate north American (Canada) prices applicable to such a project, as well as mention how complicated it would be to do it myself. Thanks again.
sergeyv2002 wrote: as well as mention how complicated it would be to do it myself. no offense, but if you don't even know how complicated this task would be to do yourself, then it's safe to assume you would find it *VERY* complicated :(
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Around a week ago I asked this question , but unfortunately I did not give enough details to get it answered. So, first of all I really appreciate all those of you guys who tried to answer my enquiry anyway, I'm always amazed by the good will of people of CP lounge.:) So here is the question: I'm interested in a auction like website, build upon JSP or PHP with a database support. Site layout and business logic are already existent, but it has to be coded. Basically , it is supposed to be something similar to eBay. How expensive ,approximately, can it be, to hire someone to do the job. If it is very expensive: how long will it take , someone without any web development experience (myself) to study the technology and create the website (I can dedicate few hours a day to study).
Thank you guys for all your feedback. It is very valuable for me and, most probably, saved me a lot of time surfing the web. Again, a lot of thanks.
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Why jsp/php and not a more reliable and speedy framework like ASP.NET ? ( OK, exactly ASP.NET, no other framework comes close IMO, certainly not jsp ). sergeyv2002 wrote: If it is very expensive It can be - it would be mega cheap on a site like rentacoder, but I'd give you a 5% chance of success the first time, maybe 12% of success overall, and 86% chance of losing some or all of your money. You get what you pay for. sergeyv2002 wrote: long will it take , someone without any web development experience (myself) to study the technology and create the website (I can dedicate few hours a day to study). Depends on how quick you learn and what technologies you use. It's almost certainly not worth your while tho, you'd need to spend at least four months writing other stuff to get to a level of being able to start, and you'd be on a steep learning curve all the way through. I do a lot of contract work for people in other countries, I'm an Aussie, but I'm in Texas right now with a guy I've worked for since late last year. He wrote to me initially after seeing my image processing articles on this site. Why don't you look for articles that would suggest that the author can do this job, and then approach them ? Or better yet, read answers in the web forums for an idea ( I do heaps of ASP.NET work myself, but I have no ASP.NET articles here, for example ). A simple auction site shouldn't take an experienced developer long to do. I'd certainly find someone and get them to do a bare bones site, and then build on it incrementally, so that you break things up into reasonable chunks and every time you make a payment, you get something that visibly works. That also means you get some functionality if you lose your developer at some point, and not a bunch of half finished junk. If you want some idea of what sort of things you should ask a developer, by all means, I'd be glad to help. Christian Graus - Microsoft MVP - C++
Christian, Thank you for your thorough reply. I would really appreciate if you could expand on "what to ask a developer". I've been a developer myself for 10 years now (C,C++,COM,MFC stuff mostly), but usually I was the one to be asked.. Even though I have an idea of what to demand (technology-wise, and time wise) I could definitely use some other opinions.
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I wouldn't call PHP unreliable in comparison to ASP.NET. I would say it is the other way around, sadly. regards, Paul Watson South Africa Colib and ilikecameras. K(arl) wrote: oh, and BTW, CHRISTIAN ISN'T A PARADOX, HE IS A TASMANIAN!
Did I say unreliable ? I meant the site is less likely to be well structured, and therefore reliable. It's easier to contain bugs in ASp.NET. What aspect of ASP.NET seems unreliable to you ? BTW, I got an email from David Wulff asking me to join linked in or something which came from you I believe ? I tried about 20 times, and the link would not work. Christian Graus - Microsoft MVP - C++
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Christian Graus wrote: but I'd give you a 5% chance of success the first time, maybe 12% of success overall, and 86% chance of losing some or all of your money 103%? :) Never forget: "Stay kul and happy" (I.A.)
David's thoughts / dnhsoftware.org / MyHTMLTidyWhy do they need to add up to 100 ? They are not related. Assuming they fall into the 95% case initially, they have a 12 % chance of getting success in the end, and either way, a strong chance of losing money if they are satisfied with the work or not. Christian Graus - Microsoft MVP - C++
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Christian Graus wrote: Why jsp/php and not a more reliable and speedy framework like ASP.NET Because you can run a JSP server for free, as are the tools you can use to develop? Because JSP pages can be viewed on "non-Windows browers"? Because JSP is designed to be both platform and server independent when ASP relies mostly on Microsoft technologies?
The great error of nearly all studies of war has been to consider war as an episode in foreign policies, when it is an act of interior politics - Simone Weil Fold with us! ¤ flickr
Some of these points are valid for a home developer. The extra cost of developing on jsp will be more than the cost of buying tools, otherwise
K(arl) wrote:
Because you can run a JSP server for free
As opposed to a couple of hundred bucks for XP Pro ? True, but not a big deal
K(arl) wrote:
as are the tools you can use to develop
There are numerous free or almost free ways to write ASP.NET
K(arl) wrote:
Because JSP pages can be viewed on "non-Windows browers"?
Have you even used ASP.NET ? We target non windows browsers all the time, no issue.
K(arl) wrote:
Because JSP is designed to be both platform and server independent when ASP relies mostly on Microsoft technologies?
Big fat hairy deal. This is a religious decision, not a computer science one. Christian Graus - Microsoft MVP - C++
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Christian, Thank you for your thorough reply. I would really appreciate if you could expand on "what to ask a developer". I've been a developer myself for 10 years now (C,C++,COM,MFC stuff mostly), but usually I was the one to be asked.. Even though I have an idea of what to demand (technology-wise, and time wise) I could definitely use some other opinions.
Hi - sorry for the delayed reply ( last one was from Texas, am now in Australia ) The core issue IMO is to ask HOW someone would impliment some things, to make sure they will use reusable controls, and otherwise structure your application so that it's easy to change/debug/extend. So, I'd show a programmer some screenshots of pages I have done that take advantage of OO and code reuse, and ask them how they'd go about writing something similar. The programmer doesn't need to know the names of lots of design patterns ( although that may be a good sign ), but they need to be using them, either intuitively or through learning them. I'd definately ask them to choose a couple of pages of code they feel represents them well and send them in, then ask questions about those pages ( to make sure they didn't just download them ), via MSN if they are not local to you. The basic 'how do you do this' questions, lots of people can answer. The design stuff is what's important and is lost on a lot of people, for some reason. Christian Graus - Microsoft MVP - C++
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Some of these points are valid for a home developer. The extra cost of developing on jsp will be more than the cost of buying tools, otherwise
K(arl) wrote:
Because you can run a JSP server for free
As opposed to a couple of hundred bucks for XP Pro ? True, but not a big deal
K(arl) wrote:
as are the tools you can use to develop
There are numerous free or almost free ways to write ASP.NET
K(arl) wrote:
Because JSP pages can be viewed on "non-Windows browers"?
Have you even used ASP.NET ? We target non windows browsers all the time, no issue.
K(arl) wrote:
Because JSP is designed to be both platform and server independent when ASP relies mostly on Microsoft technologies?
Big fat hairy deal. This is a religious decision, not a computer science one. Christian Graus - Microsoft MVP - C++
I agree with most of your counter-arguments (even if my peasant roots tell me that "one cent is one cent", that any € counts...), except this one:
Christian Graus wrote:
This is a religious decision, not a computer science one
I understand your point of view, but I don't see that as a 'religious' question only. I think it is a strategic decision: relying on MS only may be dangerous, or at least has to be asserted and evaluated. Being dependent of one and only supplier creates risks.
The great error of nearly all studies of war has been to consider war as an episode in foreign policies, when it is an act of interior politics - Simone Weil Fold with us! ¤ flickr