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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."
Yes, but saving money is one HUGE advantage...
I don't know their pricing, but I guess cost does matter as you scale up.
Reduced dependence on vendors will result in the greatest costs savings...
I don't know about others, but my main reason for using open source is that I'm free to do as I wish with it.
Copy it, distribute it, change it
When selling Open Source, I like to tout the advantage of an exit strategy. Unlike vendor tie-in, they can take their business and data elsewhere if they aren't happy or if I decide I'm too lazy to keep up with their demands.
Customers hate making technology decisions with little to no technology background. Make them feel safe by telling them they can make a bad decision and not get screwed.
They often tend to be better applications that are no-nonsense, focused on the essentials, and nicely usable since the users are the developers. Even on windows, examples are firefox/thunderbird/nvu being One-of-the-Best browser/email/html, gaim being OotB instant messenger, 7-zip being OotB compression, Azureus OotB bittorent clinets, Shareaza/kceasy OotB, Syn/jedit OotB text editors, and so on.
It's another non-story story. The results of poll on a web site are more than less than scientific, they're pretty much meaningless. Lots of visitors participate in those polls because they hope to see a specific result, or to prevent one, or to annoy someone in the room with them, or because they're bored, or any of a number of other reasons that will see them not answering honestly, or thoughtfully, or accurately. Attempting to draw a number of conclusions from said polls is downright silly.
Making the world a better place, one psychotic episode at a time.
Mod article +5 Insightful.
One of the biggest drains on any IT department has to be keeping track of licenses - how many people are using what (the whole "license pool" idea is a waste of otherwise useful time and resources), having to ask Bill every time you need to add a new server to a cluster, having a piece of software in a state of suspended animation because the vendor hasn't returned any of your calls... The financial cost does enter into this, but the real issue is just that you can't do what you want when you want to.
When I worked for the Air Force, I never worried about how much something would cost. I put in a few proposals and put in costs, wrote up a report on the various options, and submitted it to my superiors. It was rare the cheapest option was chosen. Cost was immaterial to me.
On the other hand, having to deal with vendor $*#@ all day long was a real hassle. One thing that bugs the hell out of me with proprietary software is the lack of user input - some of the tools we used were klunky and broken, but they were the only tools that would work with a particular vendor. New features were useless, while good features were left out. Upgrades were often painful.
If I were considering a purchase for a large business or government, I'd be more worried about the vendor lock in than cost too.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
Dependence on vendors ultimately translates into high costs; they simply are hidden.
With most proprietary software, there is a high cost of switching to a different vendor, and software vendors use that "pain threshold" to charge more than they would in a competitive market.
Another cost resulting from vendor dependencies are the costs and risks associated with forced upgrades by the vendor, or, worse, the vendor going out of business altogether.
So, the survey is right: less vendor dependence is a big advantage of FOSS, in addition to lower TCO. One just shouldn't forget that less vendor dependence isn't just a convenience, it, too, translates into dollars and cents.
IT budgets aren't really that flexible. Most companies have to spend the money in order to get their budgets back the next hear. So there is no such thing as TCO savings with any software.
Furthermore, cost savings isn't really an advantage from the IT department's viewpoint.
OTOH, reduced dependence on a vendore, more inhouse work, etc. These are in the intrests of the IT departments, and these are major advantages. Furthermore, I suspect that you get a *much* better ROI with FOSS simply because so much more of the expense is aimed at making the software fit your business processes rather than the other way arount.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Interesting that the primary advantage seen in this study was freedom from vendor lock in.
This isn't from the Eric Raymond "Open Source is a better development model" school of software, this is "My freedom matters", even if that freedom is as much a strong economic advantage as much as anything else.
The clients that I have that use OSS tend to do so not because it saves money, for most of them it's of little matter if software costs $0 or $1000 it's a write off anyways.
They use it because they don't want vendor lock in and they like being able to hire people to customize it when they need to.
Their happy, I'm happy, we're all happy. OSS all around!
Although I must say some of my more financialy concerned clients avoid OSS like the black death for some reason. I still haven't figured that one out.
"The programmer who works exclusively on proprietary code is limited by artifical restrictions. The value of their time - the capacity of their work to generate money - is limited by the company, the licensing, etc. "
And yet, Visicalc wasn't an OSS project. Also OSS has just a artificial restrictions as proprietary. As you pointed out "potentially" it can be shared and improved. But as Sourceforge and another "orphan project" awhile back showed. There are no guarentees of that happening. And apathy can be a far more effective barrier than anything proprietary can build.
The writers of this survey, though interesting, couldn't resist it, "The second place ranking for "lower cost" indicates that IT decision makers recognize that open source software is not really free.".
Really? All the survey proves is that they think less dependance on a vendor is more important than the fact the software itself may be free. It doesn't mean that it isn't free. Where did they get that conclusion from?
Some businesses may insist on having their software supported to the hilt and paying for it whereas others will get by without paying for support, the way businesses may sometimes get by using pirate software without support. They may not care as long as it works for them most of the time. If something breaks they just re-install it. Where I work we still use Win95 for some things. Is that supported? It's just never connected to the internet.
People here seem to be missing the point that freedom and money are linked. A consumer without choice to shop around will invariable get screwed over.
Freedom from vendor lock-in = Freedom to negotiate
benajamin
"I don't see how they can assume that visitors [...] must believe that FOSS isn't really free, unless they're rabid Adam Smith fans."
You know, there used to be a saying about Linux at one point: Linux is only free if your time is worth nothing. This isn't a bash against Linux or OSS: _nothing_ is really free, not even a pirated copy of Windows.
Can a "free" (as in beer) solution be actually more expensive than a proprietary expensive one? Yes, quite easily in fact: if it costs enough extra hours to use/admin/whatever, it _is_ actually more expensive.
Extreme example: consider (A) using an expensive CAD package like AutoCAD for some 5,000 Euro or so, versus (B) using a pencil and ruler for some $5 (assuming more than one pencil used). Which is cheaper? Well, once you factor in the cost of labour, actually the AutoCAD way may actually be cheaper.
Less extreme example: MS Office vs Open Office. If you're in a position where you must accept MS Office documents (e.g., your main customer is a big corporation and your choices are accept the Excel documents it sends you or go bankrupt), Open Office might actually not be cheaper. The effort to convert those documents and deal with conversion problems, can actually cost you more in wages than you saved by not buying MS Office.
Basically anyone who can claim with a straight face that _any_ solution, OSS or otherwise, is free as in 0$ doesn't have a fucking clue what he/she/it is talking about. It's not about being a "rabid Adam Smith fan", it's just about having the most bare minimum clue of economics.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
you are only considering the Indian guy at Microsoft's 1-800 number
My bad for not being even more clear (though I don't know how much clearer I could be). I am referencing the Indian guy at Microsoft's 1-800 number who we paid damned good money for with our support contract. A guy who is supposed to be able to solve my problems, not argue with me about whether my corporate license key for Windows XP Pro is valid (it is, by the way) and then insult me by telling me that I will need to pay additional monies to solve my problem because it is not covered by the contract.
On top of that, he wants to tell me to reinstall? Shit, I could have done that in 25% of the time it took to even get through to this joker.
You clearly have never had to deal with people from a vendor's support department, a department that you you paid damned good money to have available to solve your problems only to consistently tell you that you need to nuke the box and start over, but only *after* you have agreed to pay even *more* money.
Maybe you should get some real-world context before posting some crap like that. mmmmmmmmmmmmmkay? Thanks. Oh, by the way, why the hell should I read the Microsoft Developer Network documentation when I am trying to figure out why a fucking machine won't boot after applying XP SP2? Like I said, please get a clue.
bash: rtfm: command not found
Modern Linux distros (and other similar) operating systems are easier to install, configure and maintain that the MS variants I've observed.
However, the point of the survey was not that they don't value a good deal, they do. The point was that people give independence from vendors more weight. That leads to a similar topic which is not open source but open protocols and data formats.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
asking for help through online forums regarding microsoft products. I've personally never contacted microsoft helpdesk regaring any of their products. as you said, a simple query on google will return an abudant amount of support for most problems. i can't see how you only found these online support communities to exist only for OSS while you weren't able to do the same with microsoft products given that so many people use it.
the more people that use a software, the more and the bigger the online support communities there will be. that's why when people ask me if they should switch to apple, i tell them it's got tons of nice features, realibity, and even a unix backend to it, but one thing it really lacks is support (compared to windows). i don't know about you, but if i needed to troubleshoot windows, it's a lot easier to find someone with the knowledge than finding someone to help you troubleshoot a mac. i know i may receive bad karma for saying something like that. however, as i stated before, more users = more support. and if more people use OSS, that just means that the online support community will increase.
HD Trailers
What's wrong with you? Reality has NOTHING to do with it. OSS means freedom, don't you get it? Of course if your business (or your life) isn't based on IT it can be a huge hassle. It's nice to hear someone with actual experience talking about the difficulty of making solutions work in the real world. I'd like to see the reaction at at a temp provider when your HR department called and...
"Let's see, we need 30 people ready to work qualified to use Linux based Open Office word processing..."
"Did you say Word for Office?"
"No, Open Office on Linux, at least I think that's what it means. I know we need them right away for our annual report."
"Well gee, I never heard of that, and I know we don't test for proficiency in that. I guess we could send people with general computer skills and you could train them."
"Can they use Linux?"
"I think some take the bus, but most have their own transportation. Why, do you have a parking problem?"
Businesses don't care about the echoing cries of 'give us freedom' from people who use OSS on a desktop or two and say things like "then you just modify the code" or "I never pay anything for software". Open Source Freedom is a nice dream, but if you want big business to play along, your best bet is to work on open source reality. Even a Christian business owner is not going to hire a Christian cafeteria manager whose plan for Friday lunch is one fish and one loaf and a prayer to feed the masses. If Open Source is a superior model for software development then in the end it will triumph. Because it is superior. Not because a bunch of guys who wouldn't know logic if it rearranged their sock drawers make unsupported arguments like "everybody knows it's better" and throw in a few terms such as 'monopoly', DRM, and M$. Get a clue - the guys who own and run these companies LIKE $. They don't TRUST geeks who run around bashing the most successful software company ever, advocating illegal violations of copyright, and condemning monopolies. If they had the choice, they would all have monopolies of their own. So they're just not going to pay attention when you tell them Baltic Avenue is just as good as Park Place. Now - if you MAKE Baltic Avenue as good as Park Place, then you've got something.
billy - someday ALL software could be open source, but not if it's free
Begining of the second sentance, first paragraph... "Although not a scientific sample,...". They FA does not claim to be anything but a "startling" anecdote.
From my own anecdotes I think thier survey shows that 44% of the respondents are sophisticated enough to pick out what I would consider the main advantage FOSS offers to a serious IT buyer. This is particularly true if the buyer outsources support and maintenance, ie: with FOSS you can replace the vendor with fewer hassles. From an IT buyers perspective this significantly reduces risk and means they can haggle to get the functionality they want at the best possible price.
Trust==Risk: With FOSS the buyer can get any vendor to change the functionality and have it double checked by another independent vendor. With MS you need some serious $$$ and a standing army before they let your geeks even see thier code.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
This article ignores the gorrilla in the roorm. Dependence on vendors is the number one problem largely because there is essentially only one commercial operating system left, Windows. The success of open source and "free" software is intimately tied to this fact of life. If there were several viable competing commercial operating systems then dependence on vendors would be less of an issue and so would cost of ownership, the use of open standards and the slow pace of real innovation. Competition would make it so. As things stand Microsoft with its monoply is in a position to force upgrades through incompatibility with previous proprietary versions of interfaces and formats. Ironically their monoply came into being largely because they successfully marketed the emotional security blankets of "compatibility" and "standards".
Although not a scientific sample, the results are nevertheless startling
The results of non-scientific samples are always startling. Systematic bias looks amazing when you don't realize it's there.
The ordered results where:
I don't know about you, but I don't find these startling at all. Vendor lock-in generally sucks and can be a huge headache. It also supports the idea that Free (as in speech) is more important than free (as in beer).
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
From the article
open source software is a low cost alternative to proprietary software
How about from now on, proprietary software is a higher cost, less customizable alternative to open source software.
Yes, but saving money is one HUGE advantage...
Obviously, in the end all business decisions are about either making more money or spending less money. Since customers by in large don't care whether you use F/OSS or proprietary software, it's pretty much all about reducing costs.
Acquisition costs (license fees) may be a dominating factor for an individual whose time is effectively free. For that reason, you're not going to buy websphere when you can download eclipse, becuase the bells and whistles that help the developer get to some modicum of success a tad earlier are hardly worth shelling out the dough.
But businesses think differently, because we're paying for the engineer to get things working. It's a real, hard, quantifiable expense. Two weeks of engineer time is way more expensive than almost software I can imagine buying for him. Let's face it, there are tons of great F/OSS that are wonderful, but generally poorly documented and tricky to get running. Although keeping them running is generally a snap, which does help TCO. Projects like the Apache HTTP server, which is very well documented and (relatively) easy to set up and run are rare.
But -- experienced decision makers, ones who've been around for fifteen or twenty years or more, have all had the experience of choosing a proprietary horse to ride, and then have the owners of that horse decide to shoot it, or turn it into a camel to reposition it for the desert caravan market. You could be looking at years of effort down the toilet, and in general once a vendor decides your market segment isn't making money for them, they are usually extremely callous with respect to the impact on the customers who supported and believed in them.
Risk is a cost, and has to be factored into TCO.
So, I'll gladly pay an engineer to figure out how to use some open source web framework, even though it actually costs me thousands of dollars more than licensing a well documented proprietary framework. Once they're up to speed, there won't be a great deal of difference in productivity once they're up to speed -- let's be realistic. But once I've sunk a couple of hundred thousand dollars into a project, I don't want the rug unceremoniously pulled out from under me.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
This must be one of the stupidest articles I've read in a long time. The advantage of Open Source Software isn't this or that like the article states. The questions aren't mutually exclusive. You can value better security as much as lower cost and not being tied to a vendor. All of these are benefits and there are certainly more than 5 reasons to go with OSS. I've seen middle school students do a better study on advantages of a specific item. BTW where are the economic indicators?
For me personally what it comes down to is trust.. I trust that my data won't get corrupted in Oracle.. in 8 years i've never seen an Oracle bug which caused data corruption.
I have no faith in mysql.... I would not trust it as far as I could throw the printed source code. There are too many gotchas (I think everyone has seen that link by now..) I personally believe anyone who uses mysql for mission critical databases is not thinking straight. Sure, if your a startup and you can't afford anything else I might forgive you.
I have faith in postgresql... I don't have enough experience with it to trust it like I do Oracle but from everything I have read it seems like a very solid database in which 90% of the applications out there could easily run on.
Unfortunately we have to use oracle for our mission critical databases because we support financial systems and the software is only available for Oracle. As new projects crop up tho, I do encourage adoption of postgresql.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
Microsoft is a convicted monopolist. As soon as a Linux distro takes 80+ percent of the market, AND uses that to unfair advantage, then we can talk. Until then, your argument is pretty weak.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
It was brought to painful light a few months ago when Pat V's health took a turn for bad. He's recovering now, and so's the entire Slackware community, but we're all 100% aware of what vendor dependance means.
For those that don't know, and what rock have you been hiding under?, Pat Volkerding is the only developper for Slackware. A few months ago, he had a sudden health problem, a lung infection that threatened his life. Since he was the only developper for the distro, there was much fear that the project would die, or would splinter unrecoverably should the unthinkable happen. We're all grateful that Pat's health is improving, not only because he's a really nice guy, but because of how much we owe him. With Pat still around, there was/is a unifying vision (tm) behind the project that has allowed it to remain viable as, IIRC, the oldest Linux distro around.
Most of us already know this. And at least in the Slackware community, Pat's illness brought to the forefront the dangers of vendor dependance. I don't like vendor dependance, but Slack is the only distro I've seen that actually lives up to Microsoft's new mantra: It just works. On every oddball configuration I've thrown at it (7 computers, 3 of them laptop), it has "just worked" right out of the box. Or off the ISO as the case is. And it has "just worked" for me for quite a while. I could still install from source (and in fact, I do for some things), but we need more binary distros that "just work" to really compete with commercial systems: joe user isn't going to want to have to compile his own software.
I'm not trying to evangelise. The great thing about Linux is that there's so many flavours out there, and there's so much choice. You may prefer Debian or Yoper or RH or Vector or Tomsrtbt for all I care. The point I'm trying to get across is that even in OSS, vendor dependance is bad, mmkay?
Oh, and as for all of the other reasons, they're there too. It is free if you choose (though I, like many others, feel that at least some of it is worth paying for), and the support from the community is phenomenal. If you're having trouble getting support from OSS, you're on the wrong forum. The one that I frequent (as much to answer questions as to ask them) is a great example of the community pulling together and making the switch really easy. But the real fear, and the only one that matters with any solution, is the danger of becoming dependant.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
Yes, there are better conversion utilities for BB and WebCT. We don't care- we didn't move from either and have no plans to go there. Sakai migration might be a problem if we do move there, but I'm sure I can whip something up. Retraining will suck though.
I'm a sunk cost-it was part of my unofficial job description to get *something* up and running. I like to program, so I was able to do it. I'm more expensive than a Blackboard support tech anyway for a variety of reasons.
Dokeos has fewer user configuration options. On the other hand, I've integrated it with our uPortal, SCT Powercampus student information system, library e-reserve system and others. Most of these would have been high-cost options for Blackboard, some wouldn't have even been possible. (I get rid of BB and WebCT salespeople by asking about Powercampus integration details. They go away and never come back.)
Security in BB is very questionable, and they sue people who report security flaws to prevent them talking about them. The Dokeos folks are quite open when they find problems.
The basic reasons we went with Dokeos? We needed something, we had a budget crunch and BB and WebCT had just announced huge price increases. Faculty were ambivalent at best and hostile at worst to a CMS. Most of the high end features of BB and WebCT were just not needed, but integration into an unusual campus configuration was.
Dokeos did enough and did it for close to $0 up front cost. I sold this as a 3-year project. We just finished year two. I got the poll results from the faculty yesterday- 82% of faculty rate the system as excellent or good, just 4% as poor.
For us, this was an optimal solution-it's an Open Source success story. If I'd been at Penn State, I would have been (rightfully) fired, but I'm not and my job is quite secure.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
From the "About Us" page at computereconomics.com:
Computer Economics is an independent research organization that specializes in providing economic and strategic analysis and data to IT and business executives.
The intended audience here isn't folks installing Debian or ricing out Gentoo, it's people who buy hardware with support contracts and often expect their software to have the same. It's interesting to see that these people are starting to realize the power that vendor lock-in has, and the value in avoiding it.
Stallman has been saying this for years -- with Free software, nobody has control over what you're doing with the software, and everyone has equal access to making improvements and modifications. Anyone can become an expert, and anyone can support it given enough time investment to become familiar with the product. You can shop around for support, and it'll only get better.
In fact, the "Valuing independence" reads quite a bit like an RMS essay, except that it insists on the label "open source" while talking about freedom. Stallman insists on the distinction because while the definitions of "open source software" and "Free software" include many of the same ideas, the term Free software is intended to emphasize the freedom that the user has from operate their machines without being artificially dependent upon others. "Open source" generally has a larger focus on the technical benefits of access to the source code as described in the writings of ESR and Bruce Perens -- "open source" refers to technically better software, while Free refers to software which does not enslave or limit the user.
A few choice quotes from the article:
With most types of software, administration and support costs overshadow initial software license cost and annual maintenance fees--the costs that are minimized by open source.... Therefore, low cost, although important, is not the key advantage of open source....
[S]oftware buyers must feel some level of dependence on proprietary software vendors, from which they desire freedom.
Older versions of open source products continue to be supported through [...] third party support providers as long as there is demand in the marketplace for such support. The key appeal of open source software is that it avoids vendor lock-in and gives buyers the freedom to choose what to do and when to do it.
Don't lock-in buyers and buyers won't be as likely to leave.... For software buyers, the best strategy is to consider mature and established open source products as well as proprietary software products that adhere to open standards. In this way, buyers can choose the best software product... without locking the organization in to a single vendor solution.
Emphasis mine. I think I like the approach of this article overall -- they recommend that IT decision makers consider long-term freedom in their purchasing decisions in a forum whose recommendationd they're more likely to respect.
Somebody get that guy an ambulance!
Considering that half of the discussion has turned to a bundled/not bundled war, I thought I comment on the article itself.
I work at a software company and vendor-dependencies are a major problem, which is why we are running more an more OS-software now. Sticking with open standards is really important too. For instace at the moment we are very dependent on Lotus Notes, which is not good. Luckily, Notes supports standards as IMAP, LDAP, SMTP and has a java-interface, which means that we can start moving our services slowly to those standards while still running Lotus and soon we will not be dependend on Lotus but only on open standards. This gives a great advantage in the future, since you can choose and pick whatever server that supports those standards. Actually we get benefits right away - our office in Finland would rather use OpenLDAP and cyrus instead of Lotus and if we design our services based on LDAP and IMAP we can run them both here and in Finland without changing anything.
Buying proprietary software is not really a problem. The problem is when that software doesn't conform to open standards and you get locked in. Switching later will mean spending toooons of money. Unfortunately, many get seduced by bells and whistles of proprietary formats and later find themselves paying up a considerable amount to the vendor, without any possibility to switch.
The proper comparison to a linux distro would be a boxed set you could buy from MS, perhaps spread over a couple of DVD's, that would install Windows, Internet Exploder, MS Orifice, MS Outhouse, and Visual Studio .NET. And MS doesn't offer that.
-paul
Pistol caliber is like religion: everyone has their favourite, and theirs is the only right choice.
I find it funny yet a little disturbing that there is some amount of surprise in these findings. I suppose a large percentage of OSS advocates that don't realize that software being Free doesn't necessarily mean it is free. There's no such thing as a free lunch.
Say my company is considering some sort of solution to let all of the employees in various offices instant message each other. There's two solutions available which will meet the company's needs. There's Closed Source Messenger (CSM) and Open Source Messenger (OSM). CSM is priced based on the number of users and as such will cost my company a few thousand dollars up front. OSM is a project attracting some attention of Codeforge.net but is licensed under the GPL so we can pick it up for the cost of a download.
The benefit of CSM is that it runs on our current workgroup server and is managed through the same interface as all of the other services. Our small IT staff can easily deploy it and manage the whole setup without too much extra effort. They also get a phone number to add to the tech support reference sheet if they do run into trouble. CSM however costs a bit up front and is not quite as configurable as we might really like.
OSM is nice because there's no licensing issues no matter how many users we add to the system and have a lot of flexibility in its configuration. We can also get it up and running on whatever server system we might have available which gives us some choices down the road. On the downside the configuration is a handful of text files with confusing commennts and the documentation is a semi-useful Wiki.
Which system is cheaper? Well the OSM doesn't really have an obvious price tag so most will claim it is cheaper by default. However one of its drawbacks is the lack of consistant help and a configuration that is less than simple. This leads to the possibility that it might be misconfigured or simply that our IT folks have to waste a bunch of time (money) figuring out how to properly set up and manage the whole thing. The CSM costs us for every user we have using the system which puts a hamper on deploying it throughout other offices. We also have less direct contact with the developer if we're not a huge customer so if there's an obscure feature we'd like to see its less likely to ever be added.
In this hypothetical situation there's not necessarily a financial advantage going open source. We're looking for the best tool for the job, not to follow some particular ideology. One thing we gain from the open source solution is flexibility and mobility. If the CSM only runs on Windows we're going to be stuck with Windows for a very long time. If the OSM works on Windows, Linux, and OSX we have a lot of options down the road. It is also more likely for the open source solution to attempt to act in a more open fashion. Instead of using some proprietary communication system it might simply be an extension of Jabber or IRC or some such. In such a case we might have more choices in our end-user client so employees wouldn't be forced to use a particular platform on their desks.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
That is a remarkably insightful observation. People like to be in control, but even more than that, they hate to rely on someone out of their control, especially for something critical. If OSS can help push vendors ( and customers ) towards standards-based, interoperable, cross-platform solutions, we'll all benefit.
It'd be nice to see a larger survey.