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Key Advantage of Open Source is Not Cost Savings
cmcsonar writes "Computer Economics recently conducted a survey of visitors to its website regarding the perceived advantages in the use of open source software. Although not a scientific sample, the results are nevertheless startling."
Indeed, Microsoft may be find for small systems and hobby use, but when you scale up proprietary software becomes a worse and worse choice. I had an interesting experience in a startup company when Yahoo was considering to buy our company. They sent a bunch of people over to review our technology; and when we mentioned our databases ran Oracle, one of the guys looked to our CFO and told him "you shouldn't have let them do that". "Why not", our CFO asked - since he was one of the guys orginally insisting that to be taken seriously we'd neet to have top-tier components everywhere. The Yahoo guy's response: "Well, Oracle may scale well technologically, but it doesn't scale financially".
If you could see what my customers have been through with vertically targeted vendors, this would be obvious.
I have one customer who paid $30k for a point of sale system (5 terminals), was paying probably $5000/year in reseller support costs, etc. And it isn't that great of a system! Furthermore the vendor will only support the reseller who originally sold the unit, so he is married to them for support.
Not so with FOSS.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
(It's not karma whoring when you're mister AC)
As nearly everyone knows, open source software is a low cost alternative to proprietary software. For example, the open source Linux operating system is commonly seen as a low cost alternative to Microsoft's Server 2003 operating system, or Sun's version of Unix. The popularity of open source is seen in the fact that today the largest market share for web servers is held by the open source Apache system.
One might think, therefore, that the key advantage of open source software is its low cost of ownership. But visitors to our website didn't think so.
Open Source Does Have Advantages
Our survey offered respondents a choice of five advantages for open source.
Before we discuss at the topmost advantage of open source, let's look at what respondents are not saying.
Even though advocates of open source products such as Linux tout its security, only 3% of repondants ranked "higher level of security" as the key advantage of open source in general. In addition, although open source software is by definition open to user modification, only 17% of respondents ranked "easier to customize" as the key advantage.
Furthermore, only 14% of respondents thought that open source had no significant advantages over proprietary software.
Free is not free
So, what is the top advantage of open source? The leading vote-getter was "reduced dependence on software vendors" at 44%, followed by "lower total cost of ownership" at 22%. Although these were the top two vote-getters, it is enlightening that respondents valued reduced dependence on software vendors by a two-to-one margin over lower cost.
The second place ranking for "lower cost" indicates that IT decision makers recognize that open source software is not really free. With most types of software, administration and support costs overshadow initial software license cost and annual maintenance feesthe costs that are minimized by open source. Therefore, software buyers do not see the low or zero initial cost of open source as its most important advantage.
Whether open source software is less costly to administer than proprietary software depends largely on a ready pool of resources trained on the system, the availability of administration tools that allow system administrators to manage a greater number of systems, and the number of version upgrades and patches that are issued by the developer. In this regard, open source software may have little if any advantage over proprietary software, although the situation varies from application to application. Therefore, low cost, although important, is not the key advantage of open source.
Valuing independence
The survey indicates that IT decision makers value "reduced dependence on software vendors" as the most important advantage of open source. This indicates that software buyers must feel some level of dependence on proprietary software vendors, from which they desire freedom. Such dependence includes reliance on the vendor for maintenance and support and the necessity for the buyer to accept version upgrades that the buyer may not need or want.
For example, when Microsoft announces a new version of its Windows Server operating system, it invariably phases out support for older versions of the system. Users that are satisfied with older versions of Windows will be eventually forced to upgrade if they want to continue receiving vendor support. In contrast, there is no forced upgrade cycle with open source. Older versions of open source products continue to be supported through the open source community and third party support providers as long as there is demand in the marketplace for such support.
Our survey indicates that vendors of proprietary software are missing the mark when they argue that open source software has a higher total cost of ownership, is less secure, or higher risk in terms of ongoing support. These factors, although important, are not the key concern of software buyer
> You can't have your cake and eat it, too.
Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris all do just that, thanks.
> First you complain that Microsoft has an unfair
> advantage with bundling their apps. You want them
> to be forced to unbundle their apps. Then after
> they unbundle their apps you complain that
> Windows doesn't come bundled with any apps.
Who is "you" here? I didn't say that. But now that you bring it up... (see below)
> I think Microsoft did have an unfair advantage in
> bundling their apps, but I'll be damned if my
> government is going to force them to bundle
> competitor's apps.
More stuff I didn't say. But now that you bring it up...
1. No government forces any of the the OSes I use (not even Windows) to bundle certain apps, so this is a straw man.
2. I never asked the government to do so, either. (See #1.)
3. The difference between what you get in a typical Free OS install and Windows is that the Free OS offers you *choices*. Would you prefer OpenOffice.org, KOffice? (AbiWord? Gnumeric?) Kopete or Gaim? Kchat, Konversation, KSirc, or XChat? KDE or Gnome? (or FWM, WindowMaker, CDE, Java Desktop, IceWM, etc.?) Mozilla, Konqueror, or Opera? Mozilla Mail, KMail, Pine, Thunderbird, or Evolution? And so on. Each of these will do the job, each has its own bells & whistles (or lack thereof).
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Modern Linux distros (and other similar) operating systems are easier to install, configure and maintain that the MS variants I've observed.
Maybe for you and me, but for an IT department built around Windows with experienced windows administrators that is definitely not the case. I've seen Nix geeks struggle with basic problems in Windows and Windows geeks struggle with basic problems in Nix. Its all relative and your data point is not true for everyone.
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
A slightly more scientific survey (slightly) run by IDC (as reported in Techworld) also indicated that price was not the main factor driving businesses to open source. This survey focused on Western Europe, and had a few interesting points, such as: only 25% of the companies surveyed used Linux, but 33% use OSS database products.
One thing I found curious: "industries that treated software as a commodity were less likely to have open-source deployments." Again, a bit backwards from what one might expect. There were also, reportedly, a surprising number of respondents who said that the ability to customize the software was important. This may be related.
Why "bar sell it" ? There is nothing in the GPL whatsoever that prevents you from selling a piece of GPL software for whatever price you can get.