Just checked my MSDN subscription - RTM is still not available there. Latest version available is still Windows 8.1 Preview. For anyone curious here's a good list of changes from 8.0 -> 8.1 right from Microsoft:
They're not throwing RTM out to MSDN subscribers from what I hear. Not good.
My sub expires in 3 months and I will not be renewing it. We're freezing dev and moving off .Net and Windows due to shit like this, rising costs, audits and MS support being beyond fucking useless unless you're a multi million pound customer.
Moving off .Net due to this? I must question if that's more of a knee-jerk reaction. VS still provides a fantastic experience, and Mono is very healthy. Certainly, moving off .Net will have a higher cost to you than migrating to Mono runtimes?
It's not just this. Developer relations have gone to shit and visual studio on large projects like ours (2mloc c#) is a liability. Oh and add the schizophrenic nature of devdiv and it's just not worth it anymore. Need we say more: SQL licensing, Silverlight, windows workflow rewrite, EF is a piece of shit, MS11-100 (demon hotfix from hell). I could go on for days. We have blown over 24 days in the last 2 years on just phone calls to Microsoft.
We threw out partnership agreement in last year (we were gold).
Not going near Mono. It's another ghetto.
To be honest, our front end is going to python and the back end to postgres. Any critical sections go to C++.
So long it's not a the grass-is-greener effect. While I'm not pleased with a lot of Microsoft's recent developments, and C# seems to be an evolutionary dead-end, it's not like other platforms are beautiful. I'm sure there are lots of shit frameworks like EF on other platforms; it's not like EF is some critical piece of .NET. Personally, F# is the number one reason I'm still on .NET, with VS being a very strong second place.
I've had critical telecom services running on Mono for many years; not sure what "ghetto" means there. Xamarin also seems to be doing quite well with their cross-platform initiatives.
I've moved SQL Server apps to Postgres (due to licensing) and back (due to maintenance/replication). On another we're moving to PG again due to licensing. Postgres is great, but holy shit MSSQL provides a huge feature surface that's very accessible (licensing aside). SSMS is a dream compared to the ghetto of PG frontends (in my limited experience).
But if you can easily dump and rewrite, I'll admit, that is fun.
It depends how invested they are. If they already plan an extensive rewrite, they may very well change their underlying technology to someone they feel more comfortable with than .NET.
Same experience here. Our company is experiencing a serious MSDN service degradation, far from the "Developers, Developers, Developers" mantra. They are giving us less licenses and we can't get new ones automatically. We even tried to upgrade to a more expensive plan but they refused to give us the discount we have every year for renewals.
They're not throwing RTM out to MSDN subscribers from what I hear
Historically, Microsoft has released RTM versions to MSDN and TechNet subscribers within a couple weeks after the RTM is official.
With Windows 8.1, you can't get a U.S. based spokesperson to say whether they are continuing this policy. They all say "no comment". Just like when you ask them if Windows 8.1 was RTM'd - "No comment". You gave no citations for anything you said, but I'm guessing you're basing it on the single Microsoft employee from the Netherlands that put out a message that said MSDN/Technet would be released at general availability. That's hardly official.
We're freezing dev and moving off .Net and Windows due to shit like this
A rumor that Windows 8.1 RTM would not be available to MSDN subscribers before GA is "shit like this" that makes you move off of .NET and Windows?
audits
Need an explanation of this one. The only time I've ever heard of an MSDN subscriber getting audited was taking MSDN .iso files and keys and posting them to torrent sites for something like 5 years before they said a word to him.
MS support being beyond fucking useless unless you're a multi million pound customer.
MS development support is useless and always has been no matter how big of a customer you are. The typical chain is: find a problem, report it to MS, solve it yourself, they email you asking for additional information. Been like that for at least the last 15 years. Vendor support is useless anyway when there're much better resources like Google to find quality sites like Stackoverflow.
Just for a moment, substitute Microsoft with Apple. You could just as easily be describing either vendor.
I believe most vendors offer a similar experience in these regards. If you know someone that doesn't follow this pattern, let me know.
I had an Apple fault for months. Apple replaced my hardware but it didn't solve the issue. The problem started after a software update. After months of anguish and hardware change disruption, Apple fixed the software bug.. Despite most people suspecting it was software.
Apple's support was crap. Microsoft's support for my disabled USB ports under Windows 8 was no better - reinstall the OS.
No we have spoken to our partner support rep. It's what they've been told as well.
There are a number of other issues as well (obviously). See another reply in this thread root from me.
We've had 2 audits. They are a reality when your licensing hits the £500k/year which ours does. they check to make sure they have screwed you out of every last bit of cash even if they know you are compliant.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dn140266.aspx