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Why is OSS Commercial Software So Expensive?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the not-cost-competitive dept.

An anonymous reader asks: "Our startup honestly wanted to use OSS products. We do not want to spend time for any OSS bug fixing so our main requirement was -official support for all OSS products-. We thought were prepared to pay the price for OSS products, but then we got a price sticker shock. Now behold: QT is $3300 per seat. We have dropped the development and rewrote everything to C# (MSVS 2005 is ~$700). Embedded Linux from a reputable RT vendor is $25,000 per 5 seats per year. We needed only 3 seats. We had to buy 5 nevertheless. The support was bad. We will go for VxWorks or WinCE in our next product. Red Hat Linux WS is $299. An OEM version of Windows XP Pro is ~$140. A Cygwin commercial license will cost tens of thousands of dollars and is only available for large shops. We need 5 seats. Windows Unix services are free. After all, we have decided that the survival of our business is more important for us then 'do-good' ideas. Except for that embedded Linux (slated for WinCE or VxWorks substitution), we are not OSS shop anymore." Why are commercial ports of OSS software so expensive, and what would need to happen before they could be competitive in the future?

4 of 718 comments (clear)

  1. Support by radish · · Score: 5, Informative

    But you say you want support, that's why you're paying. Hate to break it to you, but an OEM license of XP doesn't buy you any useful support. Neither does a $700 VS license. Microsoft, like everyone else, charges for support contracts.

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    ---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"

  2. It's the support costs. by SarekOfVulcan · · Score: 5, Informative

    How much support do you get from Red Hat for your $299?

    How much from Microsoft for your $140?

  3. Re:Not a Good Business Model for Enterprise by djcinsb · · Score: 5, Informative

    The $140 (for XP Pro) is the cost of the OS without other software. Red Hat comes with a compiler suite and a lot of other useful items, so the direct comparison of the costs of the packages is not really a valid measure.

    --
    A signature always reveals a man's character - and sometimes even his name. -- Evan Esar
  4. Re:Not a Good Business Model for Enterprise by skiflyer · · Score: 5, Informative
    I don't really buy that argument, though... lots of people download closed source software without paying. The ones that need support, or want to support the company for whatever reason, are the ones that pay. At this point, OSS just doesn't have the user base it needs to make cheaper prices profitable, but that's not because of people who download it for free. It's because the ones who need support for it aren't very plentiful at the moment.

    Not the kind of stuff this guy is talking about though. Personally I think the problem is he's comparing apples to oranges... I don't have numbers, and I'm not going to go get them, but let me point out a few of the obvious flaws in the summary IMO.
    • RHE to WinXP OEM: Uh, no... Ubuntu to WinXP OEM, RHE to Win2k3 Server
    • QT to MSVS2005: Why not go GTK+ vs. C# Express, both free
    • Embedded Linux ... that's about volume, if you're embedding linux you should be saving a small fortune per appliance vs. putting WinCE on each of them, but yeah, the development aint cheap.
    • Cygwin commercial vs. Windows Unix tools, I think you're mis-understanding what each of those can do.
    Right tool for the job, sometimes it's OSS, sometimes it's not... but the above post is like me complaining about the cost of steel vs. plastic because a caterpillar bulldozer is pricier than my nephew's sand bucket.