The Business Case for Open Source Software

An anonymous reader writes "An InfoWorld blog entry makes a business case for open source software, and attempts to explain the business benefits of OSS to management and business owners. The primary benefits the piece uses to argue in favor of OSS include no licensing fees, and no license keys. The article also argues that OSS results in freedom from 'ownership' by software vendors. 'Never again will you fear the BSA (Business Software Alliance) knocking on your door wanting to perform a software audit. The BSA even takes out advertisements on Google search pages for and up to $200,000 reward a disgruntled ex-employee can receive for reporting your company to the BSA! That's quite a powerful motivator...'"

Comments

OSS

[Savage-Rabbit]

The primary benefits the piece uses to argue in favor of OSS include no licensing fees, and no license keys. The thing I like the most about OSS is that I have everything at my fingertips with OSS, they only delay is the time it takes to download stuff and install it. When you are workign with proprietary tools it's the same, you do have everything at your fingertips, except you also have to wait for the license costs to be approved by the bean-counters. Somehow I feel that I get things done quicker with OSS because I can bypass a whole layer of corporate bureaucracy. On the other hand quality of OSS software can be low, documentation often sucks and user friendliness is also an issue although with some proprietary stuff such as certain Oracle products for example user friendliness is nothing to cheer about either and I have seen proprietary software that made me wonder where people get the nerve to demand money for such crap.

Same here, and more...

[mangu]

When you are working with proprietary tools it's the same, you do have everything at your fingertips, except you also have to wait for the license costs to be approved by the bean-counters

This is one of the two main points for OSS that I have experienced. The second important point is that with OSS your system is able to survive the vendor. Where I work we have a 400000 lines VAX-FORTRAN software that we are struggling to migrate. Although we do have the Fortran source code, migrating it to any other Fortran is very costly, we have the choice of doing it ourselves or pay about $250k to outsource the job.

I think our experience shows the importance of going all the way in OSS, the operating system, utilities, compilers, etc are just as important as the applications. That's why we are migrating our system to g77 on Linux, instead of using one of the several commercial Fortran compilers whose vendors claim VAX compatibility.

Re:Business Case? How about home case?

[Technician]

It is more noticable in XP then in Vista. It seems like every 2 weeks I am installing WGA, in Vista it must be happening in the background because I havent noticed anything yet.

In XP it is a add on patch. In Vista, it's built in on the ground floor. Do a google search for Vista false positive. Pick any item on the first google page. They all relate to WGA problems on Vista.

Re:The FSF and Activists may come knocking

[tezza]

Seeing as some kind soul modded my original post as Flamebait, I'll take another post to say I probably wrongly singled out the EFF, whereas I probably meant the FSF.

In this thread you can see an employee[1] of FSF (novalis atsign fsf.org) asking for submissions about the Linksys software. This is not out of simple interest in what is running. It so that they can build a case to ask Linksys to prove they have complied with the various licensing terms of the open source software incorporated in their device.

For the other people out there who might mod this down, here is a more comprehensive list:

* Theo de Raadt On Firmware Activism - requiring firms to open linked code

* And the whole SveaSoft debacle - Is Sveasoft Violating the GPL? - Please note this entailed multi-party activism with external people deciding to leak SveaSofts code

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1 - someone claiming to be at least