Re: This is actually largely irrelevant
"there are better free alternatives out there"
er, no.
Core database functionality of the free databases may be comparable to SQL Server, but they are nowhere near in terms of the full package.
To pick some random examples, where are the better free alternatives to SQL Server's multi-master replication? What about Analysis Services? I'm sure I could think a dozen features of SQL Server that are better than the free alternatives.
(Last time I used PostgreSQL - admittedly a long time ago, it required a database dump and restore when upgrading versions. Honestly I would still use it, but better than SQL Server? Nope.)