Open Source More Expensive In the Long Run?

Jack William Bell asks: "Could the PHBs possibly be right on this one? A recent evaluation I performed of competing commercial and Open Source products yielded the surprising result that the Open Source products were more expensive (in terms of lifetime costs) over a long term than many of the commercial offerings! Why? Basically this mostly revolves around higher support costs for Open Source products where no commercial support is available (unlike, say, Linux where you can purchase support from Red Hat, etc). This particular case might also be a result of one special set of requirements and environment and a similar evaluation for a different set of requirements and environment might yield a different outcome. But, nonetheless I found the experience instructive and I would like to ask two questions of the Slashdot readership: Firstly, is Open Source usually more expensive when all lifetime costs are factored in? And, secondly, is anyone in the business of providing commercial support and training for the entire universe of Open Source, perhaps contracting on a product-by-product basis? I guess a corollary to that question is, if not then why not? There might be a viable business model here!"

"Here are some details for you:

I am currently doing consulting work to create a complex custom search utility for a governmental agency. The first major step was, of course, to select a Search Engine that provides as many of the custom requirement features as possible; thus reducing the amount of custom code and my expensive time. Besides high-end search features my customer also required something that was fast, easily administered and likely to be supported for a very long time. Why the last? Well, the expected lifetime of the new project is ten years and this is not out of line considering that their current system is more than a generation old!

Consider again the environment; this is a government agency and is somewhat resource starved. They have a limited number of staff and the staff must split their time among many different working areas. They must be generalists and do not have time to specialize. Plus there is some turnover, especially among the better skilled staff. These factors lead to a basic requirement that there is someone they can call for support for every product they use, preferably 24 x 7. They also need to know that this support will be available for the entire lifetime of the project -- in this case a full decade.

Now to the chase -- without going into boring details, or names, we were able to locate nearly sixty Search Engines that might be suitable. Most of these were commercial, but some were Open Source. From this list we selected eight that seemed most likely to provide all the capabilities we needed, of which one was Open Source (in fact this was actually two variations of the same project). We then performed detailed paper analyses of these products, comparing features to our requirements list and doing some estimated per-year costs to determine the lifetime costs. From the results of this we selected a smaller number for in-house evaluation and from that we selected the final recommendation.

For the commercial products the vendors could supply us with support costs, often broken down in such a way we could choose our support like a Chinese menu. But for the Open Source products this was not the case. Contacting the maintainers of the Open Source products and asking if anyone provided commercial support was fruitless; in one case the response was downright rude (basically a variation on RTFM) and in the other the response was more helpful, but still could not suggest anything other than being active on the mailing list.

So I had to figure in the cost of one of my customer's IT staff staying active on that list and learning enough about the product to provide in-house support supplemented by the email list. Estimating this at one tenth of an FTE and that FTE at a low $80,000 per year resolved to $8,000 per year. This was nearly three times the cost of the most expensive commercial product support!

When factored in with equal administration costs, adding in training and support (available from these vendors) and other one-time and yearly costs (for such things as licenses), the commercial products were more expensive for the first four to six years of lifetime costs, after which the Open Source product became more expensive. Of course the difference wasn't too great, ranging from 20% to 60% higher in a ten-year lifetime. But it was there nonetheless.

Now my customers are not averse to using an Open Source product. After all, there is no guarantee that even the most established vendor will not fall by the wayside in those ten years. They just want to have a certain comfort level, even if it is illusory. And I must admit that any commercial product will require some time from their IT staff, but because there is 'support' available this is seen as being much less important. Major fixes or changes can be dealt with by hiring consultants like myself, and lesser issues dealt with by calling customer support. They might even be right in this estimation.

My estimates might have other holes as well, but that isn't germane. The selection process is nearly complete now and, in a detailed analysis the Open Source products turned out to be missing a couple of features that would have been showstoppers even had support been available. I want to know what resources I can use to (honestly) avoid this issue the next time I am comparing Open Source to commercial software for a client!"

Comments

What a Coincidence!

[Anonymous Coward]

This article coming right on the heels of the Halloween VII article. The MS machine works quickly!

Let me guess...

[tmark]

...since you posted a (well-articuled, at that) argument that OSS might not always be the cat's pyjamas, I'm willing to wager you're new here ?

OSS phone support

[Tablizer]

"Hello, welcome to Open Source Phone Support. Press One to listen to the fucken manual. Press Two to get a fax of the fucken manual. Press Three to get email of the fucken manual. Penguin T-shirts are currently on sale for five-ninety-nine. Proceeds go to improving the fucken manuals. Please stay on hold if you wish to purchase one. Oh, and by the way, don't forget to read the fucken manual before you call again. Have a nice day."

Its True!

[Raskolnk]

Its true, really. Anyone who doubts this can come sit at my desk with me while my company unknowingly pays me to compile and recompile KDE/GNOME/Mozilla /etc. all day.

Re:One benefit

[djrogers]

Of course at my last job the option would have been spending 4 hours on our internal procurement process, and two weeks waiting for our 'preferred' vendor to send me the wrong disk....

Re:One benefit

[Anonymous Coward]

here is a simple Office11 XML file:

<?xml version="1.08b" encoding="MS-01234"?>
<!DOCTYPE document PRIVATE "mstp://office11.microsoft.com/docume~1/script.asp .net?doctype=office11+transport=mskerberos >

<document>
<document-format format="MSWord" version="Office11"/>
<!-- MICROSOFT HAILSTORM END USER LICENSING AGREEMENT

By reading, parsing, downloading, viewing, posessing, being infected by, thinking about, or smelling this or any other microsoft document you agree to the terms, conditions, fees, and other stuff posted anywhere within the microsoft.com domain or any domain own by or affiliated with microsoft or any of it's affiliates or associates.

*remainder of EULA comment snipped*
-->

<!-- This XML file contains software that was originally part of the Berkeley Software Distrubution, which is copyright it's respective authors -->

<document-content>
<!CDATA[ asofduy9hj89zxcvhl32nr9z8sdnf9283nz983wqrno23r2389 j9823j4nmlzsh987drh23qh45r238x8a979hjuvnl3289rhrkj szv978h23k.nznsd98fjhsfn32zuhjvoh3nu890uajf23nkads f82u34rjiaqraw98fjh23hr987y53ql1984y9tnqgbx
(rema inder of encrypted binary document format snipped)
]>
<embedded-component type="excel spreadsheet" alternate-type="vba macro">
<embedded-content>
<!CDATA[ (more encrypted binary data) ]>
</embedded-content>
</embeded-component>
</d ocument-content>
</document>

Monetarily more expensive perhaps...

[LoRider]

but how much is your soul worth?

Soon we will rid the world of all commercial software and open source zealots will rule the land.

"In breaking news today October 2, 2010 Mr. Stallman the leader of our free but not as in beer society has decided that we will be required by law to refer to him as GNU/Stallman. For those who fail to do so will be required to attend a course on proper acronym usage and application and could be fined up $5000.

In other news Bill Gates is still trying to figure out how Microsoft could have lost $40 billion dollars. Rumor has it that a Stallmanite hacked the .Net server which contained the bank account information containing the entire $40 billion and dispersed $1 to 40 billion PayPal accounts. Since the loss of the $40 billion in late 2004 Microsoft has struggled to stay in business. GNU/Stallman exiled Mr. Gates and his company to northern Canada, forbidding Mr. Gates from ever returning to the US. According to GNU/Stallman, 'He is a menace to our free society.' From this reporter's perspective Mr. GNU/Stallman used to be referred as the same."

A gunshot rings through the news studio as a Stallmanite assasinates the subversive news anchor for his obvious attempt to tarnish the good name of our leader GNU/Stallman.

Viva GNU/Stallman

Re:One benefit

[DunbarTheInept]

In fact, you can probably count the amount of "successful" OSS projects on 1 hand.

1. Apache
2. XFree86
3. Linux kernel
4. FreeBSD kernel
5. Gnome

Damn, I ran out of fingers. Let's try the other hand.

1. KDE
2. Mozilla
3. ReiserFS
4. The TCP/IP stack itself, typically implemented in most OS'es off of BSD's source, including even Windows.
5. RCS and CVS

Okay, Hold on, let me take my shoes off. Sorry about the smell...

1. This little piggy runs DNS Bind
2. This little piggy firewalls with Drawbridge
3. This little piggy edits text with vim
4. This little piggy edits text with emacs
5. This little piggy runs sendmail (yeah, it sucks compared to newer mail daemons, but it most certainly counts as "successful".)

Now the other foot:

1. This little piggy uses gcc.
2. This little piggy uses Perl.
3. This little piggy uses bash or tcsh.
4. This little piggy uses Python.
5. And This little piggy uses Slashcode to claim Open Source projects aren't very successful.

Okay, I'd better stop. I've almost run out of appendages and you really don't want me to use the twenty-first one.

Re:The guy has a point though

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you man, you are not l33t.

A true h4x0r would write his own PPP using a combination of Perl scripts piped into controller program made with the GIMP.

All you needed to do was read the source. Any idiot can figure out how some acid tripping Berkley student implemented serial ports in 1980.

re: send Gates to Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

... what makes you think WE want him up here?!??? :-)