... be careful with your claims of freedom.  Richard Stallman would not agree.

Focusing on the price point aspect of free...

To serve up a public facing, database backed web page at the U of M, only $760 in licensing

SQL Svr Web 2008R2 1Proc - $635.00
Win Server Web 2008R2 - $30
Visual Studio 2010 Pro - $0

To serve up a public facing, database backed web page outside the U, just over $5,000
SQL Svr Web 2008R2 1Proc - $3,500.00
Win Server Web 2008R2 - $469
Visual Studio 2010 Pro - $1,199


This can be restrictive when you are working on applications that will be shared with 30+ other
sites.  Most of which without Microsoft Site Licensing.

--
Aaron

On 09/17/2010 04:52 PM, Craig Gjerdingen wrote:
> I don't know if you're open to it, but I'm pretty partial to Microsoft .Net 
> framework and platform stack.
> 
> Pretty much everything from the front end to the back end is totally 
> integrated. It is a wonderful developer/designer experience.
> 
> Additionally, these tools are all available for NO additional cost to you as UMN 
> staff. But you have to ask for Visual Studio 2010 professional edition from 
> [log in to unmask] because they don't list it on 
> https://download.software.umn.edu/ any more (now it is in netfiles)
> 
> In particular the combination of the powerful Visual Studio 2010 IDE, .Net 
> framework 4.0, Entity Framework or NHibernate, and ASP.Net MVC 2 are a 
> formidable offering. Again all of this has NO added cost to you. It's all free.
> 
> There are a ton of IOC and ORM offerings in the .Net space so you can easily 
> choose one to your liking.
> 
> MEF and Unity (dependency injector) are fairly cool too.
> 
> Support, Training, Developer Communities, Books, knowledgeable consultants, 
> campus expertise, 3rd party vendors are all available. 
> 
> One configuration you might want to look at to get started (where someone 
> else has done the work of picking the pieces for you) would be to look at 
> http://SharpArchitecture.net/ which is stored on GitHub at 
> http://github.com/codai/Sharp-Architecture
> 
> Before you choose Ruby/Rails I suggest you investigate deployment difficulties.
>