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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."
I don't know their pricing, but I guess cost does matter as you scale up.
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
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
I use linux the same reason everyone else does, to make me 1337 8-|
Since it wasn't mentioned in the summary, I'll post it here. The key advantage they found was less dependence on vendors. <flamebait> Something Linus recently found out :) </flamebait>
Myself, I use KDE on Linux because it gives me the best environment to code in. I used to use Windows, and have a Mac OS X laptop, and find them both awkward compared with KDE. I really don't get why they are considered miles better for the desktop than Linux. Linux was okay for me on the desktop eight or nine years ago, and it's come on leaps and bounds since then. I'd happily pay for Linux, but I wouldn't pay for Windows.
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.
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.
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.
(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
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.
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.
That was a close one, I almost clicked the link to RTFA.
I'm sorry, but you'll have to use a better adjective than "startling" to get past my click-filter...
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.
That's totally skewed out of perspective. 22% of visitors to the site (not necessarily IT decision makers) believe that FOSS has a lower cost, and this is the most important advantage.
The 44% of visitors who viewed lower dependence on vendors as the most important may also believe that FOSS is free, or they may. We don't know. We just know that for them, reduced dependence on vendors is more important than lower cost. The same can go for any other choice.
In fact, 100% of visitors may believe that FOSS costs less. But only 22% of them see it as their first priority. I don't see how they can assume that visitors who don't see cost as the key advantage must believe that FOSS isn't really free, unless they're rabid Adam Smith fans.
Well, that's okay. Often data is altered, padded, or just plain made up to make researchers sound smart -- I mean, 74.2% of all people know that.
In a similar vein, the old saying "time = money" applies here in an interesting way. The conversion of time->money and vice versa is not a fixed calculation. OSS offers an attractive conduit for the time side of the equation.
For example, a programmer's time is only worth so much money. Let's say that time goes into a mediocre piece of proprietary software. The world turns and either the code is maintained to its late death or it is forgotten. Either way, the value of that programmer's time, expressed in the code, is very much limited by their ability, the platform, etc. This applies not only to the actual code expressions, but the design, algorithms, and general ideas in the that project. The programmer's time is locked into the IP owner's evaluation of the project's value. Essentially, this one buyer assumes the value of the programmer's time and fixes it.
Take the same scenario, but have the programmer work on an OSS project. With the OSS codebase, the programmer's time is now placed into a repository that can - *potentially* - be shared. The code can be incrementally modified by those who have need/desire to extend or fix it. The maintenance cost can (*potentially*) be lower, as the work can be distributed. The design and algorithms can be reused and spread. Ideas are portable, and OSS ports ideas across intellectual property formats. Now the programmer's time is not fixed by the intial buyer. It is left to the market - everywhere that code is accessed.
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. With OSS, the possibility exists for their work to generate money beyond these limits. Firms, individual users, and other programmers can potentially find value in that programmer's work. The value of a programmer's time can be valued according to the full merit of the work (not just licensing binaries, for example) at a more realistic market price (i.e. a price met with better knowledge of the product and lower transaction costs).
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
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?
bash: rtfm: command not found
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.
> 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.
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.
And my experience is the exact opposite. So what is your point?
I do agree that most competent distros are usable for standard desktop applications (internet, office, etc). However, I don't think it's fair to whine about Windows not coming with any applications. You can't have your cake and eat it, too. 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. 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.
I suppose what you might have meant to say is that Linux gives you choices of these extras, and were installed through various packages off the cd, which there were probably several of due to the added bulk of all the software you could ever need.
What sort of work do you do that requires IM btw? It seems to me that it might take 2 hours tops to install xp, an office suite, browser, e-mail, etc. , unless you count the updates, which you didn't mention (if you did I would understand more where you're coming from, updating sucks!).
Umn... that really depends on the distro. Having friends who are gentoo advocates, I can promise you that some distro's aren't the kind of thing you can just download and install and run. On the other hand, mandrake^H^H^Hiva is about as basic as they come.Overall, yes, some linux installs are easier than windows installs, assuming you like the bundled software. But then again, I happen to have Windows XP Install ISO that has been updated to SP2, which would GREATLY cut back on the install time.
> 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.
Actually you are free to use OpenOffice.Org under Windows too. And Firefox and Opera. And Thunderbird, and Pine. Application choice has nothing to do with the OS.
"You know, screw it, time for a change of pace -- lets switch vendors on our database/customer tracking/data mining/image recognition/OCR/whatever solution. I want to spend a couple hundred thousand in transition costs and cause disruptions in our main business to no purpose whatsoever"
Let me tell you what it's like in the real world, using two real world situations I've had to cope with a number of times in my career:
Here's the deal. You've got a ticketing/dispatch system that isn't cutting the mustard, and what's worse, the fine print of the license says that to be in compliance, you need to cut even more functionality, or pay an extra three mill a year. Not even the database schema is available for examination, so you can't jump ship to another vendor, or more reasonably in this day and age, hire a couple of Java geeks and roll your own web app.
Here's the deal II. You've got a mission critical messaging application that can't keep up with demand, pounding the little windows box it's on so hard it keeps falling over. You'd like to put it on one of the big mama-jama Sun Enterprise clusters you've got sitting around with spare capacity. Too bad, the tiny company who licensed it to you had to auction off the sofas in the break room on ebay to meet payroll, and can't really afford to develop a Sun version. Or the megaconglomerate you licensed it from couldn't be bothered to recompile and test on Sun for a single customer.
If it's open source, it's likely someone's already compiled, tested and put it out as a tarball for Solaris10. It's even more likely it's written in a portable language like Java, PHP or Python, using your choice of OSS RDBMS and web server software, making the platform it's deployed upon irrelevant.
Massive changes to infrastructure happen, happen often, and happen for sound business reasons. Closed source applications get in the way of an agile and profit-making IT environment.
SoupIsGood Food
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
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."