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Why is OSS Commercial Software So Expensive?
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?
Exactly.
My employer is going RH (and possibly SuSE) and we're saving something like 7 figures in licensing and hardware support contracts by dumping the majority of our HP and Sun systems for bladeframes running RHEL.
Even with that, we're still paying a crapload, but the savings are immense when compared to RH's "real" competition. Personally, I suspect that RH would be nore than happy to lose what little of the workstation market that they have so they can rake in more money in server licenses...
An OEM version of Windows XP Pro is ~$140.
And the virus you get is FREE, but ends up costing you a little more than $140.
joking and MS-flaming aside...
OSS support for specific products that you mention is outrageous.
but for the MAJORITY of OSS products the support is much less.
But it all comes down to simple economics:
Supply vs. Demand if all of those OSS products you mentioned have viable competitors the price would be lower
in the closed source realm there are TONS of players and the costs need to be lower to get a good chuck of the market.
"Just Smile and Nod." --Huck
We run Jboss, Tomcat, Apache, MySQL, Asterisk, etc. Do we pay for support? Hell no. We have a knowledgable and competent staff. You only need to pay for support and commercial products if you DON"T have a knowledgable and competent staff. You are basically paying someone else to be that staff. That's why you are paying the high price. That and the re-assurance that someone is responsible for the product you are paying for so that you have someone to bitch and whine to when it breaks. With an unsupported open source product, you are the only person responsible for maintaining everything. These are the reasons why you pay the high price. But you always have the option NOT to pay and just support it yourself. Plus you are comparing HIGH END support contracts and their are low end support contracts that are a LOT less. It all depends on what you want.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Exactly, Redhat WS is not equivalent to MS Windows XP. With Redhat you get a lot of stuff you don't get with Windows XP, like a full office suite, which from MS would cost more than $300.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Which would mean that all software begins life as insanely expensive and then comes down in price? My experience sez that's not the case.
Quality and reliability
Yeah, I've never had to track down stupid issues in open source software. Never!
Support
Since the common wisdom seems to be that Microsoft charges a lot of money for nothing and it's super-easy to replace "propietary" software with FLOSS equivalents (MySQL vs. Oracle, GiMP vs. Photoshop, etc) I'd say that's about the only thing you could conceivably be charging for, other than packaging and/or integration. So I suppose the issue here is really "why are support contracts so expensive?" rather than "why is the software so expensive?".
Either way, my (relatively limited) experience with FLOSS vendors is that they tend to be a bit arrogant in the sense that they'll tell you that whatever you're using right now is "shit" and they have the solution to all of mankind's problems (including yours), and then they have absolutely no idea how to create things like tiered pricings and segment/volume discounts for different types of customers. That's something commercial software vendors do very well. The commercial ones will also tell you that they'll get you off the "shit", but then they can walk the walk. FLOSS vendors seem to be all talk.
In our case we ended up going without a support contract (insanely expensive) and hired a guy that was an expert with the software. He did all the customization work we needed for about a year and he made a good $50K with virtually guaranteed future contract work. The "vendor" (if one can call them that) ended up losing out to the hacker kid in mom's basement - literally.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
RedHat does charge $299 per year for one license. With Microsoft, you're getting $140 for a copy forever (and if you order from a major vender, it's basically free). I know, I know, the argument is that you're getting perpetual support for the RedHat license- but have any of you tried to use it? It's generally pretty terrible. We've ended up switching everything to Ubuntu or CentOS b/c it's just as easy to find support by googling, rather than getting re-routed through RedHat. It doesn't make sense to me. Over the lifetime of XP, you've paid $140, and gotten free updates. For the lifetime of RedHat (let's assume XP's ungodly 6-7 year lifespan so far) you're paying almost $2000! You can also argue that "you don't need to get support for all the machines" but RedHat complains incessantly, and you won't get any updates, which isn't really safe for a corporate world. Additionally, a significant Linux deployment usually requires someone with significant knowledge. Last I checked, it's cheaper to hire someone to manage a windows deployment than a RedHat one. I wouldn't mind paying the $299 as a one time fee...but $2100?? Almost 10 times the value of a Windows license? Is the support your paying for really worth that much?
No, the problem with QT is that their business model is not actually based on any legal concept of copyright. Their spin on licensing is that developers must pay a seat license to develop applications which use their library if the resulting product is going to be "commercial". They specifically say that you can't use the open source version of their product to develop commercial software. Then, in the same breath, they claim that their library is under the GPL, which, if you ask the authors of the GPL they will tell you, has no such restriction.
How we know is more important than what we know.
On thing that a lot of comercial Open Source shops are guilty of is providing to high of quality support. Sure, RHEL is more expensive with an update/support contract than Windows, but have you ever called Microsoft before? Not only do you get friendly folks from india on the line but usually leave (afte ~ 6 hours of calls) with no real answer. If you tally up the time spend on the phone and then running diag yourself on the Win box you end up with much higher costs.
... on an intel mac mini. Not only is it really stable, bugs are fixed without me lifting a finger (well, ok, so I run yum -y update).
Don't get me wrong, there are some comercial OSS companies out there who over price and under serve, but the majority I've delt with have been really, really good compared to the traditional competition.
On the same token, not everyone needs a comercial version of XYZ app. I run Fedora 6 BETA as my production workstation at home
The use of software should be gauged by the return on investement that the software and support provides. Have an internal IT Helpdesk team? Do they know XYZ app well? Why pay to double your support? Double support is something a lot of shops do so they can 'find a neck to choke' externally? The news is that choking doesn't fix the issue!
I've spent a decent amount of time working for Open and Closed companies and shops. The quality of code and support from the Open (or more Open) shops were much higher than the Closed source/black box shops.
What a Windows license buys you in terms of support is two major things:
1) Patches. MS releases patches for Windows and everything associated with it, and tests those patches to make sure they work. If an incompatibility is found (it's rare one survives the initial testing) it gets fixed. Now of course there is OSS that does that, but there's no guarantee. With MS it's not really a question of if the software will be patched during it's supported life. Same deal with supported OSS software like RHEL. Sure, Fedora also does patches, but they aren't tested like the RHEL ones are, and if the developers of the component don't release a patch, they aren't likely to patch it for them.
2) The knowledge base. MS has a massive knowledge base that is really very good. I use it all the time at work. When a Windows system bluescreens do I start a debugger? Hell no, I'm not a programmer. I write down the details and look it up in the knowledge base. The answers tend to be just want I needed. If some weird problems comes up, again I go looking in the knowledge base. It is a central, easy to search, repository of solutions tested by MS themselves. You don't get that with a no-charge OSS product. Sure there are news group posts, and IRC logs and such out there but man, tracking down the answer can be hell, if anyone has found an answer at all.
3) Vendor support. When a vendor sells you a system with Windows, they are guaranteeing hardware support (at least if they aren't shady). When Gateway sells me a rackmount server with Windows installed, I know that it will be working, and I know that it will have drivers for all it's hardware. However when I try and install FC4 on it, maybe it doesn't work. In fact what does happen is it kernel panics on install (we still have never figured out why). Should it not work, I can call them and get it fixed, if it's a Windows problem they'll call MS and get it fixed. You can get the same thing with Linux, but only buying a system with a supported Linux distro on it, which is usually an enterprise Linux.
Those are not at all worthless support resources. Support doesn't necessarily mean holding your hand through configuration, it just means ensuring that all the resources you need are available. You get that with commercial solutions, be they OSS based or not. It's not the same as a support contract, but often is what people need.
Support?!
I submitted 3 Apache bugs (39940, 40146, and 40301) and they haven't even been assigned to anyone or commented on by anyone, never mind fixed!
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
The article *is* a troll. It was written by someone contracted by MS. I don't know how that could be more obvious, other than them saying "I am being paid by Microsoft."
It sounds like one of those case studies you see in a section on a company's website.
I submitted 3 Apache bugs (39940, 40146, and 40301) and they haven't even been assigned to anyone or commented on by anyone, never mind fixed!
Which IIS bugs have you submitted. Have they been fixed? How much did it cost you to submit them?
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
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. Hopefully as it catches on more, that will change.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
The problem is your inability to do a small amount of research on your own. From their FAQ:
Can we use the Open Source Edition while developing our non-opensource application and then purchase commercial licenses when we start to sell it?
Answer:
No. Our commercial license agreements only apply to software that was developed with Qt under the commercial license agreement. They do not apply to code that was developed with the Qt Open Source Edition prior to the agreement. Any software developed with Qt without a commercial license agreement must be released as Open Source software.
So say I develop a nice open source app. Someone comes to me and wants a commercial license so they can distribute it without source. I go to Trolltech and ask for a commercial license for their library and they spring this shit on me. There goes my opportunity to fund my open source development. Moral of the story: don't use Qt for open source development if you ever want to be self funding by dual licensing.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Another reason it makes sense is that you can strip a box down for one task, like a web server or mail server, and reduce the amount of maintenance on that box much easier with FOSS, due to the reasons you state. This is difficult with MS, but very easy with Linux or BSD. Adding other features is pretty easy later on if you want. It is the flexibility that makes FOSS so popular on the server side.
Need a domain server? I can take a spare box, install a base Fedora and bind in about 20 minutes. Or add bind to an underutilized server in about 2 minutes. MS just can't compare when it comes to small to mid size business servers. FOSS installs faster, has fewer issues when hardening, and in general is easier to secure, particularly when we are talking about using only one or two services. (block every damn port but 53 and move ssh to an unused high port and open that one up.)
On the desktop, however, it has been another issue. I can't even get my USB wireless ethernet cards to work in Linux, and there are virtually no apps for small to midsized businesses. Most of the solutions that I have looked at on Linux cost about 20 to 50 times more than similar products on Windows (yes, really 20 to 50 times more) so we can't AFFORD to move to "free" software on the desktop yet. I know this will change, but I was convinced 10 years ago that it would have changed within 10 years....
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
I see. Yeah, I'm sure it's easier to buy a new NIC or whatever than fight with the one that's broken. Until manufacturers care about drivers for OSS operating systems, that's going to be an issue. On which subject, by the by, I have a nice anecdote: When I got my IBM Thinkpad T40, with an Intel WiFi chip, there was a problem with the WiFi driver. A small percentage of packets were being corrupted. I sent an e-mail to the driver project mailing list and in less than an hour the driver developer at Intel sent me a patch to test. When manufacturers do care, support for OSS can be very good, indeed.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Indeed. I chose Intel wireless specifically for this purpose, and I'm rather sad to see people giving it flack for the distribution restrictions.
The crazy part about all of this is that the OS I'm using is BSD. The nic works great on Linux, but whoever ported it to BSD (Theo, I think?) either didn't do it right or somewhere along the way it got screwed up. Now bringing the interface down and back up makes the NIC worthless. Reboot is required to fix it.
I believe the original driver release was for Linux from the manufacturer (the also have a firmware blob for the device). I suppose I could write them for support, but I'm not hopeful.
The price for redhat includes support the price for XP does not. Not only that but it also comes with databasess (plural), directory services, compilers, office suite, and thousands of other pieces of software.
The author is cherry picking and presenting half truths in order to try to make a point. It's a weasily thing really.
Anyway so QT costs a lot of money, why not use wxwindows, FOX, FLTK, or a dozen other perfectly fine open source toolkits.
So "one company" charges you a lot of money for real time linux why not go to a competitor?
I think this guys is thinking OSS is like windows and that there is only one vendor for anything. Most windows shops are shocked to find that they can shop around for vendors and negotiate contracts. They don't have to bend over for their vendors (strange concept huh?).
evil is as evil does
I run a small business... so let me answer your question, but I disagree with the grandparent, so I'll also include some answers, though he's right that there are big gaps.
- Accounting: GnuCash is good, I can't use it because my accountant doesn't support it.
- Some kind of basic organization ala MS Project... dunno personally, but MSProject sucks too.
- Visio equivalent... dunno
- Defect tracking: Bugzilla
- Source Control: SVN Obliterates some of the 6 figure competitors IMHO
- Email: Thunderbird
- Contact management: Yes, we have choices, but the propertiary ones are better IMHO
- Inventory: Dunno, can't say the commercial ones are any good either, guess that's why I'm writing one right now
- Scheduler... sorry Sunbird & the like aren't up to part yet... still gotta give Evolution an install, but I'm busy
- Backup solutions: OSS is way ahead of the commercial ones here IMHO
- Databases: PostgreSQL is a winner for me
- An OS that supports my eight monitor setup easily, stuck on windows
- Remoting software: Putty is the best CLI one I've ever seen, TightVNC is good for most of my stuff, but I prefer to use RemoteDesktop when appropriate (when I can lock the screen.. yes I know rdesktop is great, not a server tho)
- Internal chat network: OSS slaughters propertiary
List goes on and on I imagine, every small business needs something a little different, that's why the economy loves us so much, we put a huge percentage of our income back into operating costs. But, as you might have determined from my disjointed comments, my customers love me because I employ the best tool for the job philosophy... I ask two questions, and in this order: Can it do the job well? What's it cost? Often OSS is better, often it's not.Agreed; to be comparable, one would have to add to the price of Windows the prices of a variety of goodies that come bundled with Linux. And if one intended to stay in business, one would also have to add in the prices of antivirus, antispyware, firewall, and other necessities that Windows needs to be operational.
But also the TFA is doing a lot of mixing of apples and oranges. Charges per seat for FOSS imply yearly support contracts, which makes sense, since by definition the license to the software itself is free. What is outsourced under these support contracts, and how does that compare with the cost of self-supporting a Windows shop?
I work for an institution that thinks it has done the right thing by going almost exclusively with Microsoft. And it does get the software licenses for a very low price, and there is no overt charge for accessing MS's extensive knowledge databases. But we have one employee at a cost of at least $50,000 per year whose full time is taken up with administering a handful of servers and a couple of dozen workstations. Part of that $50,000 is a covert cost of using the MS knowledge databases, because he has to wade through that stuff to figure out why the boss's email has taken to reverse spelling every seventh word. Oh, he has an assistant at about $25,000 per year whose time is spent doing all the routine stuff that keeps the software running (configuring, reconfiguring, repairing blown registries, maintaining manifests of authorized software in case the BSA decides to audit, etc).
Comparing the OSS yearly support per seat to the $75,000 per year for on site personnel in a Windows shop is at least as appropriate as the comparisons made in TFA.
I think I am talking about something very different than you. To me, our business is a small to mid size biz. We do $10 mil a year, and generate close to 100,000 purchase orders, invoices and to a lesser degree quotes, per year. With 15 people. GnuCash can't do that. And yes, the accountant doesn't support it anyway.
We are not a technology company, we sell stuff. Our software needs are about inventory, manufacturing, distribution, wholesale, retail, ecommerce, and include 3 basic product catagories, 5 different price levels, 2 methods of sales, 3 locations, importing products from different countries, UPS, FedEx, LTL trucking, dedicated trucking, tracking, dropshipping, contract manufacturing, marketing, and a lot of other things that most companies with 15 people don't do. I have been here 13 years, and no one does it like us. Then again, most of the companies in my industry from 13 years ago are now out of business.
We are stuck in the middle and have unique needs, which is why I have spent the last several years kludging stuff together with Perl and doing most things with my 2nd or 3rd choice of methods. We are not a traditional small business, but we are not a full blown enterprise, and there is a complete dirth of products available for companies like us, both on the WinTel platform, but particularly in the FOSS arena, because there are not many companies like us to write for.
We dont use schedulers or calenders, source control, chat networks, bug tracking, etc. Not every Slashdotter works for a tech company. Some of us sell the stuff you guys buy with your extra money. I dual boot linux and MS so I can game and get work done. On the server side, we have used Linux for many years (think RH 5.x), including samba, bind, apache, etc. but for the heavy apps, they just simply do not exist for mid sized companies. Yet.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
The RHE he was using for comparison was RHE WS, which is an apt comparison.
Startups will frequently take the quick way out... develop for Windows with Visual Studio first since they think that's the fastest way to market. Then they find out that the customer wants the app on Solaris, HP, even Linux. The startup doesn't have the resources to re-write the app, so what do they do? They try to port their apps using MainWin or some crap like that and find themselves in a living nightmare of royalty and development licensing fees as well as horrible performance. At the end of the day they finally bite the bullet and purchase Qt licenses and their lives become a lot easier.
That was my last company.
The flip-side? Develop on the Mac and then have to port to Windows! Use something Mac2Win, find that it doesn't satisfy, and then start migrating to Qt.
That's my current company.
"...today consumers have been conditioned to think of beer when they see a bullfrog..."
Makes for an interesting saying:
Information wants to be free
But the people who produce it want to eat
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
We do not want to spend time for any OSS bug fixing so our main requirement was -official support
Is that cheaper closed source stuff is bug free or "supported"? I don't think so. The biggest benefit of free software is not having to worry about such costs. If you want to distribute non free software, you are back in the non free world and I'm not sure that's a viable place to be in any case. We can look at each of your issues, but it's impossible to go to far because we don't really know what your business model is or what you want to do other than have bug free software.
QT, $3,000 per seat vrs M$VC at $700. How many M$VC's can you get at no cost for free software distribution? Is the difference in price worth the platform you will have to force on your customers? No version of Windows has ever worked as well as any Linux distribution I've used.
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. Once again, why don't you just write free software and what do think your users will think of WinCE?
Red Hat Linux WS is $299. An OEM version of Windows XP Pro is ~$140. But Debian costs nothing and I never run into bugs. Fedora and a host of others are also available at no cost, why would you ever pay $140 for a Windoze seat?
A Cygwin commercial license will cost tens of thousands of dollars and is only available for large shops. We need 5 seats. Windows Unix services are free. Ugh, why not just sell your customer a box that is *nix, like GE and other big equipment makers are doing? Once again, consider your user's experience and the cost of "supporting" all of their calls back to you when M$ does something else nasty to Unix Services.
The cheapest place to be is free. You are going to have "bugs" wherever you go but there are fewer in the free world and you might be able to fix them.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Using the Qt Open Source Edition, can I make non-opensource software for internal use in my company/organization?
Yes, that's right, they actually refer the GPL as "viral" and they're not trolling (pardon the irony). It's their FAQ, so fair enough that they're gunna try to encourage people to buy as many commercial licenses as possible, but this is just out and out lying.
How we know is more important than what we know.
The OSS community could learn a lesson from MSDN which is where he will get support on the MS development platform.
You OSS people talk about choice and how wonderful it is until someone chooses something other than OSS and then you crucify them for a horrible choice.
I suggest you look in the mirror the next time you call some one a idiot, shill, astro turfer or a troll!
Like for example, the Qt libraries, which he /could/ download and use for free. /Until/ someone remembers this detail, long after they've gone live / IPO and purchased their commercial Qt license, and points to the FAQ that says "from day one, you must use a commercial license", and the GNU community, not to mention the Slashdot community, screams like their first child has just been stolen about suing them into oblivion for violating the sacred GPL, you mean? Because you know and I know that's exactly what would happen, following your "advice".
Then maybe you should be removed form Windows support and reassigned or let go. Sorry but if you have these problems "all the time" then you are doing something wrong. Where I work we've got about 500 windows computers, give or take. Those run on a rather eclectic mix of hardware, some as old as P2s, some as new as Core 2 Duos. Servers, workstations, you name it. We run a pretty eclectic mix of software too. Off the top of my head some examples would be Matlab, HFSS, Photoshop, Office, Vegas, Visual Studio, Metrowerks, Miktek and so on. A fairly diverse Windows environment, in other words.
Wanna know how many patches ever came out that broke systems? One: SP2. How many broke? 2, both personal systems loaded to the gills with spyware. We wiped them to get rid of the spyware, they took the update and worked fine. That's a pretty good track record. Comparable to Solaris (which we also run a lot of)
Now let's compare that to, say, Fedora, which we also run. I won't go in to patching issues, let's talk about more basic ones. FC4 won't install on our Gateway blade servers period, which is primarily where the research group wants it. It kernel panics and reboots before hardware enumeration. Cannot figure out why. FC3 does install fine and has been running... Sometimes. The systems seem to unaccountably lock up and sometimes even turn off! Our Linux guys are stumped. They've run memtests, that's fine, run an mprime test, no heat problems, but let those things go and they just hang. There is no info at all available on what might be the cause.
Now I don't fault the Fedora group 100% for this, after it's not certified to work with this hardware, but then that's part of what a software license buys you. On all the systems we buy with Windows they have compatible hardware. All the drivers needed are provided, they are even all signed by MS. With a free Linux, well obviously there's some hardware compatibility problems, at least with FC4. No way to solve it, other than to buy a certified Linux solution. Nothing wrong with that, but then you can't argue the price advantage which is precisely what this whole thing was about.
So really, leave me alone with the tired zealot tripe of "Windows breaks all the time," or "Windows crashes every day." No, it doesn't. My full time job is supporting an environment that's largely Windows and really, it gives us very little troubles. My Windows desktop at work, well it never crashed before I moved it to the Vista beta. I mean never, in 3 years. Most of our systems just work, the patches go out automatically and there's just no problems. When something does get messed up, there are excellent resources to find out what's wrong.
At work I see time and time again the saying "Linux is only free if your time is worthless," demonstrated. Supported Linux solutions can be real easy, and solid, however then you are talking money. Free solutions have no upfront cost, but we seem to spend a ton of time making them work. When you have a situation like "Hmm, Fedora is busted, well try Debain, or Slack, or whatever," that's time intensive and thus not free.
It's also apples and oranges. RedHat server versions are comparable to Windows 2003, plus MS Office with the built-in OpenOffice, plus SNMP services, plus a print server, plus an industrial grade mail and webmail and IMAP server, plus a backup server with the built-in Amanda system, plus an industrial grade file server, plus industrial grade firewalls and security tools, plus good CD and DVD ripping sftware, and you don't have to buy additional client licenses if you have more than 25 clients. Moreover, almost all of RedHat server tools are available free as part of the CentOS distribution, if you don't want the commercial level of support and would rather use the tools free. I've actually used CentOS to demonstrate RedHat tools, before urging a client to go ahead and buy a licensed RedHat system in order to get that commercial grade of support after my contract is ver.
No, where the original poster got messed up was in trying to run commerical style software on an open source system. QT licensing is the same cost as several weeks of on-site consulting time, and should frankly be replaced in most projects with a simple web interface for portability. The Embedded Linux software is very customized, and very project specific: that's why it costs so much. Rewriting everything in C# is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard of: it's a Microsoft written language, it's *designed* to frce you to use proprietary tools, and it's a Java wannabe. If these folks had been clueful, they'd have rewritten in plain C for speed and portability, or C++ for object oriented code, or actual Java for the write-once, run-anywhere advantages. But writing anything in C# that can be avoided. And the only reason to use Qt, and its licensing, is to allow you to keep your source code unavailable.
The CygWin license cost quoted is misleading as well. The only license for CygWin that costs that much is if you want to use CygWin to publish binaries without providing source code. The licensing is described at http://www.cygwin.com/licensing.html.
This original poster was basically trying to build a closed source environment, and paying the premium to insist on keeping their environment closed. Of course that will be expensive! It's not taking advantage of the open nature of the systems at all.
Bollocks.
The Open Source Community is very forthcoming with help. No matter what problem you're having, you can rest assured that someone else has already had that very same problem before -- and solved it, and written about how they it. Google is your friend. Also, Linux at least is modular by design, which simplifies troubleshooting. As counter-intuitive as it may sound, knowing how to fix one problem on a Linux system may help you fix an apparently completely unrelated problem.
The reason why commercial licences for software also available under the GPL are so expensive, is to discourage you from buying them and make you choose the Open Source version instead. As long as you give back any improvements you make (or keep them secret, and keep your trap shut if/when someone else makes the same improvements and gives them away) you'll be fine. If you want to write closed-source software, you have to pay for it in money -- which can be used to fund the creation of Open Source alternatives to your own closed proprietary shite. By the same token, if you're too proud to search the Internet to find a solution to your problems, you can pay for it in money.
The Community generally wants to help. However, if you don't play by the rules of The Community, expect a big, fat "SCREW YOU!" Why should it be any other way?
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Eivind.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
"The most likely reason is that the F/OSS companies don't yet have the size of (paying) customer base necessary"
Perhaps. But consider this; with proprietary software _everyone_ has (for certain values of has) to pay for the support, wether they need it or not. With F/OSS, those who really want and/or need the support have to carry their own weight as the rest do without.
"I very much doubt it is that the F/OSS companies are milking excessive profits off support."
The proprietary companies are milking excessive profits off of the monopoly value of copyright tho, easily allowing them to subsidize certain groups of users at the expense of others. Yet another example of the conflict between free market economy and IP.
``what would need to happen before they could be competitive in the future?''
I don't think anything needs to happen before these products are competitive, because they already are. Vendors charge more for them, and apparently, customers are willing to pay more for them. In other words, the products are worth it.
It makes sense that OSS is more valuable than closed source software, all else being equal. You get the source code, you are allowed to edit it, you are allowed to sell it, you're allowed to incorporate it in your own products, etc. etc. You can maintain the software even if the vendor won't. These are huge advantages.
Of course, all else is not equal. You're not looking at the same product being available under a closed source and an open source license, you're looking at different products and different licenses. Nor do all the advantages of OSS necessarily matter to you. So, to you, perhaps the open source offerings are not worth the cost. However, that doesn't mean that they are not competitive; it means they are in a different market.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.