Within the context of any one sourcing decision, the freedoms offered by OSS can be quantified as cost savings.
"Freedom to use software the way you want" = productivity gains = don't have to hire more staff = cost saving.
"The ability to fix things if you need to, the ability to make sure there's nothing hidden in the code that you may not want" - those freedoms are available with much (although by no means all) closed-source software: but only at a ridiculously high price. In a true apples-for-apples comparison, that high price can be expressed either as a cost on the closed-source side, or a cost saving on the open-source side. On the other hand, in a skewed comparison (i.e. if the closed-source model in the comparison does not include those additional costs), it follows that these freedoms allow for a much lower budget for contingencies under the open-source model. Again, cost savings.
Just a moment - can anyone explain how any software (given that "software" essentially just means algorithms that require a computer to execute) could be anything but "abstract ideas"?
Don't know whether this is of any help or not, but I seem to remember being told a long time ago that "the text on the VDU is green and the background is black, because we have found that this combination causes the least strain on the eyes", or something to that effect. Now, I'm not a doctor, so I have no idea whether that is really true or whether it was just sales-speak for "all we have in stock are green-screen monitors". But - at least personally - I find a colour-scheme of bright text (of any colour) on a black background much easier to stare at for hours on end than the current fashion of dark text on a bright background (unless you're doing graphic design or some other application that really does need to appear in "real-world" colours).
Slashdot Mirror
Within the context of any one sourcing decision, the freedoms offered by OSS can be quantified as cost savings.
"Freedom to use software the way you want" = productivity gains = don't have to hire more staff = cost saving.
"The ability to fix things if you need to, the ability to make sure there's nothing hidden in the code that you may not want" - those freedoms are available with much (although by no means all) closed-source software: but only at a ridiculously high price. In a true apples-for-apples comparison, that high price can be expressed either as a cost on the closed-source side, or a cost saving on the open-source side.
On the other hand, in a skewed comparison (i.e. if the closed-source model in the comparison does not include those additional costs), it follows that these freedoms allow for a much lower budget for contingencies under the open-source model. Again, cost savings.
Just a moment - can anyone explain how any software (given that "software" essentially just means algorithms that require a computer to execute) could be anything but "abstract ideas"?
Don't know whether this is of any help or not, but I seem to remember being told a long time ago that "the text on the VDU is green and the background is black, because we have found that this combination causes the least strain on the eyes", or something to that effect. Now, I'm not a doctor, so I have no idea whether that is really true or whether it was just sales-speak for "all we have in stock are green-screen monitors". But - at least personally - I find a colour-scheme of bright text (of any colour) on a black background much easier to stare at for hours on end than the current fashion of dark text on a bright background (unless you're doing graphic design or some other application that really does need to appear in "real-world" colours).