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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?
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.
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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.
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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.
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....
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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.
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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.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.
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The RHE he was using for comparison was RHE WS, which is an apt comparison.
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?
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