That said: Cheap? I know that attitude comes up a lot. It seems a business license (required, because > 10 people) is a thousand dollar. In what world is that 'cheap', if you compare it to WCF aka free?

Yes, $999 (per developer!) might be reasonable, but read the idea up this thread. I'd love, as in wishful-thinking?, to port our software, in my own time, without any support or budget, to platforms I care about. Let's say SS allows me to replace the WCF parts: How would I sell that to my boss?

"Look, you know those weird platforms you have no love for? Pay $999 per developer and our software is now able to run on those."

It's not going to happen. The commercial license of SS makes it immediately useless for my pet project. It doesn't matter how amazing it is, unfortunately.

We're a very MS heavy team. I'm the outlier. Anything that doesn't come from MS (and sometimes even those suspect 'open-source' projects - how do they make money??) basically doesn't exist. Porting WCF stuff to SS would introduce a new framework, replacing well-known technology with something else. Ignoring the price this would be tough and anything but cheap: Training has a cost as well.

Sometimes open source is the wrong answer for an organization. You may not like that, but that's when you quit (which is not a big deal).

1) I'm talking about a pet project. Not 20% as in one day a week. I'm working normally, would love to see a way to make this (a port) happen in the evenings. $50 would be more than I would like to spend here, because it's my own money and the end result - even if successful - is probably a 'Huh? Interesting..' and that's that. It would be for my own amusement.

2) To see if it will improve my workflow I'd need to invest (time) in it first. Since I don't have a use case for SS (see 1) I see no point doing that in the moment. I learn new stuff every day, the queue is basically endless. SS could've jumped to the top if it would've been a viable option. So I'm not making the case that it won't improve my workflow: I plainly don't know anything about it.

3) Yes, my salary is more than a grand / month. But that's a crappy metric. It certainly feels as if lots of people here make $100+ a year, the SF crowd. Right, if you basically cost that much in 4 days then this might be something to argue. But that scale changes rapidly with smaller salaries.

4) Even if we agree that $ 1000 (per nose) is nothing, who's going to spend that? No clue how this works in other companies, but here you have to make a case, get X people from management to agree. Why would they? "I would be more productive"? Without snark, I'd really like to see a case for a purchase like this that could work in my scenario. Here's the rundown again, that's what you'd face: "Replace a free and well-understood MS technology in a shop run by MS fanboys with an open-source stack that no one knows a thing about for thousands of dollars, so that the one developer with his crazy interest in non-Windows environments can rip WCF out of our stable and mature product to - maybe - port it to Linux, because he'd consider that cool". No offense, not trying to attack you here - I just want to make it blatantly clear that 'random' comments a la 'that money is nothing' are - if not wrong in general - not useful here.

5) Quitting can be a big deal. It would be in my case. Circumstances, details matter.

From what you're saying, and I'm not saying this to rip on you: I doubt one exists, and it doesn't sound, from your description, like making one would be an ethical maneuver anyway. I don't work in Microsoft-heavy shops because I don't enjoy it, but I don't try to change them to suit me because it would not be in the company's best interests and I am mature enough to understand that. (If asked, because I've been hit up by decision-makers in Microsoft shops before, I'll explain my position, but that's always from the outside.) I feel you when you say that your circumstances preclude finding a better fit, but that doesn't mean that introducing additional risk is the right thing for the employer who pays you to work effectively on their behalf.

Changing established shops is at best difficult and comes with little payoff unless you own the damn thing, and should be done with the best interests of the org in mind--that's what they're paying you for. If you can't get what you feel like you need and what you want doesn't outweigh the opportunity costs, you should leave, because it's better for all involved.

(A grand a year really is nothing, though. Software developers have broken their brains when it comes to cost structures. That's in the ballpark for the amortized cost of a cubicle, which can realize way less value for the company than the right piece of software. Or, you know--the Windows Server CALs that are the actual cost of WCF.)

And any would-be license that isn't already stamped as open-source by OSI or as free software by the FSF is an instant red flag, simply because there are plenty of licenses available to pick from.

> Many people consider copy left licenses more restrictive than your average commercial license anyhow.

Even though some people might say that, that's only because they don't know what they are talking about. A license for proprietary software does not give you the right to fork. As a recent example for why that is important, ask the people that have invested in FoundationDB how they feel about that, then read the story of MariaDB on Wikipedia to understand the difference.

ps. condolences about the "if it's not from microsoft it doesn't exist", there exists many companies with better cultures. Outliers like you are worth their weight in gold.