I see your mistake: you've mad the common and dullardly assumption that punishing assholes will inevitably lead to a totalitarian big brother state.

I'm actually not aware of any dictatorial regime that started out by smacking people with the shut-your-fool-mouth stick and evolved into say a Libya or Nazi Germany. I'm pretty sure they started immediately with that suppressive agenda.

Yours a slightly more complicated version of the chicken little game, similar to the one GWB used to get America lined up behind him for Iraq. "Do nothing and the sky will fall". "Punish mouthy jerks and we'll end up with numbers instead of names and pity our tiny chocolate ration." Punishing social malformity is done to moderate dick heads, a necessary preoccupation of liberal societies who have marginal elements who are dicks simply because they feel they are privileged to be so. It's not the first step to totalitarianism, but rather the government's way of clipping you on the back of the ear, much as your parents should have done when you demonstrated this behavior at a younger age ... but that is another argument entirely.

And in answer to your question, the punishment for shouting that in somebody's face would likely be far, far more immediate and painful than a few weeks in jail and no internet. And they'd probably get off for the beating they handed him, as it would be seen as justifiable by any jury. But lets face it, trolls do so because they are Anonymous Cowards, so your RL scenario is going to be a lot more rare.

First, you are asking the wrong crowd. You'd be better off asking entrepreneurs and start-up dudes.

Second, don't start the conversation by making an offer. That puts you in the worst position because now you are setting the bar, be it too low or (worse) too high, and they have to react to that. You are better off just asking "So, is there a way that I can start earning equity in the company, rather than just straight compensation?" That way they can evaluate the question itself rather than whether or not they want to accept your offer, and in return you will get to evaluate the deal they are prepared to offer (assuming there is one).

What utterly useless information/advice.

Him: I'm a windows developer looking for advice on how to deploy my service

You: Switch to Unix and PHP, learn a completely new set of tools, and *then* you can work on your idea

The truth is, you can deploy a cheap/effective website, scale it affordably, and meet all of your client's needs on a windows platform just as with any other. The idea that You need Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP to do it isn't eating your own dogfood, it's drinking your own kool-aid.

Here's some advice that speaks to your experience set, instead of somebody else's:

1. First, talk to a professional entrepreneurial 'enabler'. Universities often have free resources and can answer a lot of your business questions first. My wife specializes in technology commercialization, and she was laughing herself silly at many of these comments ('lots of market analysis first" crap ... the only thing that's important is to *get* *it* *out* *there* and then refine over iterations as you get feedback)
2. You don't need to start with the cloud, especially if you are inexperienced. That will just add a layer of complexity, and you don't need that level of service yet. Start with a hosted service. There are plenty of cheap ones, and you could get a couple of Windows-based dedicated servers for as little as $140-150/mo.
3. Get two so you can set up some simple replication across them on top of your regular backups. It doesn't have to be elegant (for now), it just has to work. If/When you have extra income, hire somebody for the day to refine your setup and suggest improvements. You don't have to be the expert and even an occasional expert peeking in can help solidify your infrastructure.
4. Ignore the malware/hacking FUD ... *nix sites get hacked into just as often and Windows systems. What it comes down to is the admin's experience in locking it down, and the shoddy advice of suggesting you switch to LAMP wouldn't give that to you. Again, bring in an expert for a day and have him lock things down for you and give you advice.

As to platform, in 2003 I worked on a social-type site that had well over 10 million accounts (probably 50,000/day active) that ran on 6 Windows boxes using MS SQL and ColdFusion on the back-end (yep, ColdFusion). We had craploads of traffic and did just fine with only broad caching enabled and a really basic round-robin session distribution. It didn't cost us a fortune to set up, though it did earn one, and there wasn't a cloud in sight.

The point is, just because this crowd is pushing their personal experience set as being the only one in town, and even if all the 'big' guys are now using LAMP-type setups, it doesn't mean their's is even remotely the best solution for you to start with. If and when you need this type of ultra-cheap/ultra-performant setup, there will be thousands of these guys willing to work for peanuts to move you over. Better to have the good idea launch and make money early on than to try and relearn your entire environment.

No, I'm claiming that hacking tools are beyond the everyman, and thus much less open to abuse.

Besides, by your reasoning, somebody who distributes an easy-as-pie bomb recipe isn't at all culpable, and that the onus is on the building owner to make sure his building is bomb-proof. "It's not my fault his building collapsed so easily, your honor ... he should have spent more money protecting himself from self-righteous asshats like myself".

Enabling this type of crime (invasion of privacy) is just as criminal and even more morally/ethically suspect than the people who commit it. The users can at least excuse their trespass as curiosity or at worst a crime of opportunity, while Eric had the opportunity many times over to question the decision of creating and then releasing the tool. Hacking tools are one thing; this puts the keys into the hands of the everyman. Pretending that it is just an honest tool that 'might' be used inappropriately is a farce.

Karma is a fickle bitch, and she doesn't trade bullshit for redemption. I'm thinking it will only take one large company to get burned badly by this irresponsible choice to illustrate this to our young, self-righteous Eric.

Considering where we were a hundred years ago, it seems rather pedantic and just as dismissive for professor grumpy pants to say it's would to take us 180K years to get there. The stuff that will get us there quickly might still be sitting on grease boards, but chances are it really isn't that far off that a robotic mission will be able to reach a system this close and do it within a reasonable timeframe (i.e. decades). Liftoff before the turn of the century, I'd expect.

What's more likely to stall this is dollars and ability for a project of this scope to survive multiple successive administrations across multiple international boundaries. And a good reason too, hopefully better than "all hands, abandon ship".