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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."
With all commercial software, I spend huge amounts of time just looking at if things are compliant or now.
Can I move an install to another PC and not break the license?
Can more then one user use the software on a PC without problems?
Will license structure XYZ or ZYX suit a particular company better in the long run?
do i get the lite version or premium version?
will it's copy protection/activation become a problem?
All this is totally gone with GPL licensing, the answer is basically I can do whatever bar sell it (In my case I dont modify and code, so that doesnt come into play).
I also find the quality of open source products much higher then that of commercial software, irfanview I reccomend to anyone wanting to make minor changes to digital pics, and in batches, works well and is free.
It has been at least three times in last 4 years that I have seen our company to struggle with dependence on a software vendor and there has been huge efforts and significant resources (10+ developers working on internal product) just to reduce dependency on unresponsive vendors. Its pain to ask for new features or just simple bug fixes in timely manner. We even offered to do them ourselves, but since there is no access to the code... no luck. Its very frustrating and if its some software that is critical for your company, this can prove to be a major pain.
is that I find that I get even better support with open source. There have only been a few times that I could not go to Google, bust out a simple query, and find a whole forum of people who would help me through a problem within a couple of hours.
.conf files, man pages, and other documentation, while Microsoft "support" has a script that they are seemingly not allowed to deviate from.
Sure beats the shit out of sitting on hold with Microsoft for 2 hours, only to get grilled and having to convince them that you are not trying to steal product, only to get charged for support that ultimately ends up with fdisk/format.
Granted that not all of those problems are Microsoft's fault, but in my experience, they could have done some freakin troubleshooting before telling me to backup, reinstall, and restore. At least the F/OSS community will have an extensive reference to
Maybe I am wrong. Maybe the advantage is that F/OSS tends to me more modularized, and thus you are more likely to rescue an installation by fixing one component... Thoughts anyone?
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> If you're talking about, say, a small business
> that needs basic desktop machines, the overhead
> in say, going with an OS OS will far exceed any
> price savings.
And what sort of "overhead" might that be? A modern Linux distro practically installs and configures itself, comes with boatloads of software, and does not require an advanced degree to sit down and start using for everyday (non-development) purposes.
My last Linux installation took about 1/3 the time of my last Windows installation (on the exact same, very recent hardware) and the Linux installation included setting up hardware, networking, and installing many common personal/small biz apps such as office suite, browser, email, IM, etc. The Windows install did not include any of these "extras", all of which must be done *in addition to* the OS install for a Windows box.
The last time I installed Windows, it took me roughly a day and a half to have everything ready to roll so I could get some work done. The Linux installation took maybe a couple of hours to achieve the same goal. In spite of the fact that I have about 8-10 times more experience using Windows than I do using Linux.
Sure some of the apps are a little different, but most of them have a little "Help" clicky-widget in the program menu just like any Windows app does.
My experience is that the myth that Windows has a lower TCO than Linux is just that, a myth. *Particularly* in the SOHO space.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I can back up this story with a similarish one, but I don't need to post AC, because we're proud of what we've done.
I work at Friendster, and we have... ah... a really big database cluster. It runs MySQL. Not that Oracle didn't try. They sent out sales people to convince us to convert over. After we looked at the dollar signs, we laughed them out of the office.
I was interviewing a candidate for one of our sysadmin positions. He said something along the lines of: "Well, now you're running MySQL. Once you start making money, do you think you'll start using Oracle or something else that scales better?"
I laughed and said exactly what parent AC said: "Oracle scales in theory. But in practice, 99% of businesses can't afford to scale with Oracle. I can build another couple terabytes of DB storage in a redundant replicated cluster tomorrow for $10k with MySQL. With Oracle it'd be 10x that much, if I were so lucky." That's not to mention the overhead of calling their sales guys, licensing hassle, and other crap. With MySQL, you install and go.
There are other huge advantages MySQL has over Oracle and their ilk. Take this for example... Right now MySQL AB tech support is stellar. Front line support knows when to escalate to the proper engineer (InnoDB problems? Two hours later, Heikki Tuuri is emailing you!). I remember talking to a PHB a year or two ago, and he said: "Well, MySQL support may be good now, but that'll change. It'll get bad."
My response? So what? Then I'll find a MySQL support shop that has good support and use them. They can support MySQL just as well as MySQL AB can.
Try that with Oracle. "No, Oracle, I hate your tech support. Starting tomorrow, I'm going to have Sybase support our Oracle installation." Oracle will laugh at you, then double your support costs for your insolence.
fifth sigma, inc.