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The Business Case for Open Source Software 158

Posted by Zonk from the exciting-time-to-like-penguins dept.
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...'"
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The Business Case for Open Source Software More

The Business Case for Open Source Software

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  • OSS (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Savage-Rabbit ( 308260 ) on Monday March 19, 2007 @07:29AM (#18399859)

    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... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by mangu ( 126918 ) on Monday March 19, 2007 @08:00AM (#18399981)
      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:Same here, and more... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by senatorpjt ( 709879 ) on Monday March 19, 2007 @09:04AM (#18400437)
        Where I work we have a 400000 lines VAX-FORTRAN software that we are struggling to migrate.

        Yeah. And, I bet that when those 400,000 lines of code were written, the idea of DEC folding was about as plausible as the idea of Microsoft folding.

        • I bet when much of that code was written, DEC was a puny upstart whose survival was entirely uncertain. After all, this is Fortran we're talking about, not a modern language like COBOL.

          (Only half-joking. I migrated several hundred thousand lines of VAX Fortran to g77 in the 90's, so I feel the GP's pain. But I still have a soft spot for Fortran.)


      • This migration reminds me of an article I read in ComputerWorld many years ago.

        I think it was the Travelers Insurance Company. The head of IT there filed suit against the COBOL Standards Committee for coming out with a new standard. His reason was that Travelers hadn't finished converting some millions of lines of code from the next oldest version of the standard to the last version of the standard!

        The article said that Travelers had a TWO HUNDRED FIFTY MAN COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT WITHIN the overall IT

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by umghhh ( 965931 )
      OSS idealy allows the user to take the software and go to another design organisation that provide same or better service. This makes a difference if the original maker is out of reach or unwilling/unable to provide fixes and improvements timely. That is advante as I see it. My fellow business people do not see it this way though. They like to complain however how their software vendor (and we are not talking about our beloved M$) let them waiting for years for update and when it comes it has hundreds of fe
    • "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." Another problem I foresee for OSS software is that it may tend to mutate over time without strict controls or much in the way of accountability

      • Re:OSS (Score:5, Informative)

        by kebes ( 861706 ) on Monday March 19, 2007 @10:03AM (#18400943) Journal
        To my mind this is the actual problem with OSS. Accountability is nill. With MS products the same defects are there (though less so as it turns out (predictably)), but in their case at least we know who to blame and can expect the product to be fixed. With OSS I see no way to assure that.

        That's not even remotely true. You expound the myth that there is accountability in proprietary software, whereas there is not with OSS. In reality, after you pay for your proprietary software, you have absolutely no guarantee of bug fixes, and no guarantees that changes to the product won't break backwards compatibility (e.g. "mutate"). Don't like it? You can either stick to the current version, or buy the next version, or pay them more money for support contracts that make guarantees.

        With OSS, after you freely download the software, you also have no guarantees of bug fixes or interface stability. Don't like it? You can stick to the current version, or freely download other versions, or pay those who make the software for support contracts that make those guarantees, or pay a third party to make those guarantees, or hire people in-house to modify the code to suit your needs, or contract a third party to make those code changes, or port your data to a different software product.

        In any case, it's up to a business to evaluate their software needs on a case-by-case basis. But please stop spreading this "because you pay for it there is some guarantee of accountability" myth. Anyone who has tried using phone support for commodity software, or who has read through an EULA, knows this to be a joke.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by e-scetic ( 1003976 )

          Don't like it? You can stick to the current version, or freely download other versions, or pay those who make the software for support contracts that make those guarantees, or pay a third party to make those guarantees, or hire people in-house to modify the code to suit your needs, or contract a third party to make those code changes, or port your data to a different software product.

          Or simply post a bug report, or correspond with the programmers to resolve the problem. This is definitely not something

      • Re:OSS (Score:4, Insightful)

        by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF ( 813746 ) on Monday March 19, 2007 @10:08AM (#18400999)

        On the other hand quality of OSS software can be low, documentation often sucks and user friendliness...

        Yeah and the documentation and user friendliness of closed source code often sucks too. Just because the software is open source is not some magical bullet. Gee the boss wanted a database but I downloaded a Web browser, but it's open source so that's okay right? It's not like you still don't have to perform due diligence when choosing software and evaluate every package based upon its merits and risks and your use cases. It is just that you have to recognize that open source software is an option for many use cases and often a very good one. The real issue is so many morons who can't understand that there is a different business model and you don't have to buy everything in order to use it.

        Another problem I foresee for OSS software is that it may tend to mutate over time without strict controls or much in the way of accountability.

        With open source software you have the code and can always compile it the way it used to be or hire someone to. You can hire someone to do a fork if you need to. With closed source software you just have to go along with whatever the vendor wants to do and if they don't want to keep offering an old version just for you or make some change you need you're screwed. Open source wins in this category and arguments that it doesn't seem absurd to me.

        What works today may not work tomorrow and when things in your corporation start breaking whose throat are you going to choke?

        Choke? When MS decides it no longer wants to support a given language or feature in the software you have whose throat are you going to choke? It makes no difference if you are using software from an organization, or paying from support from a given commercial entity or paying outright for it, except with open source you have a few more options. This situation is not different. If a product stops supporting what you need and is moving the wrong way, open or closed you look at other options and offerings. With open source you have the added option of paying some random contractor to keep the software you have running the way you want.

        With MS products the same defects are there (though less so as it turns out (predictably)), but in their case at least we know who to blame and can expect the product to be fixed. With OSS I see no way to assure that.

        With MS software you can report bugs and they may or may not be ignored. If you pay for support, they are less likely to be ignored. This is in no way different from open source software, except they tend to be better about fixing bugs in general and in a worst case scenario I can take bids from different people to solve the problem. I have several outstanding bugs with Adobe and they've been in the last three revisions of one of their products on every platform they support. When you do something the application crashes. My company spends significant money working around that flaw. The fact that they are closed source is helping us how? Unless we offer them significant money, they don't care. The only real difference is if it was an open source product, we could have an engineer internally fix it or we would have multiple choices of hiring someone else to fix it, thus costing us less.

        The solution to the competitive model of OSS for the Big Vendors is very simple.

        I think you're failing to understand the real wins of open source software.

        EULAs and license numbers are not the biggest differentiators between OSS and closed source commercial software. OSS is fundamentally a more efficient model for users for software. With closed source software you're always somewhat locked into one vendor, even if it is only being locked into one vendor for improvements. With OSS you always can take competitive bids, thus getting better prices. With closed source software the vendor charges what they think will maxi

        • Note that the GP's points may hold true to some unsuccessful open source projects you don't want to use anyway. This means single developer projects with little/no user community.

          Regarding accountability: Most successful FOSS projects have a core team which is responsible for maintaining the software. This is true of PostgreSQL. It is true of Linux. It is true of just about every other successful program out there. These people usually take this responsibility more seriously than at proprietary compa
      • On the other hand quality of OSS software can be low, documentation often sucks and user friendliness is also an issue

        You get what you pay for. Want good documentation for a FOSS project ? How about *paying the author to document it* ? I know, I know, it's a truly revolutionary idea. They have already given you the code for free, and yet you demand even more for free. In my own case, I spend several hours a week coding (for free), and I just don't have the time to document it as well, although I would like

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mpe ( 36238 )
      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.

      Maybe they include a clause in the EULAs forbidding negative reviews.

  • Business Case? How about home case? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Technician ( 215283 ) on Monday March 19, 2007 @07:36AM (#18399891)
    The primary benefits the piece uses to argue in favor of OSS include no licensing fees, and no license keys.

    When WGA started up, I started looking at Linux again. Business has some incentive. So does home users. We have 3 machines running Ubuntu now. We have one Windows ME laptop and one MS XP Home machine. The XP machine will be the last to migrate. It's just waiting on a port of Turbo Tax. There is no plans at this time for Vista due to the Anti-Piracy effort gone overboard. I don't buy booby-trapped software. I expect software to just work without complications. Vista is loaded with complications.
    • 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.

      • Re:Business Case? How about home case? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Technician ( 215283 ) on Monday March 19, 2007 @08:01AM (#18399995)
        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.

    • Why wait? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Svartalf ( 2997 )
      TurboTax has DRM that messes with your machine in ways that can trash it- in and of itself
      that merits changing off of the product for a comparable solution.

      TaxCut doesn't seem to do this and works completely correctly under WINE and CrossOver,
      even down to printing the forms. I've done my taxes for the last 4 years without needing
      to reboot into XP. No hassles once you've got the web foundation fonts installed in WINE.

      It just simply works. It's not as good an answer as a native version of either tax progra
      • Why wait if that's the only hold up for you?

        Noob. Never messed with Wine. The printed manual is more than an evening of casual reading. The tax deadline is aproaching. Maybe next year. Shifting gears with a looming deadline is not a good idea. When free of the deadline is the time to experiment and learn all the bugs.

  • While here in India... (Score:5, Informative)

    by jkrise ( 535370 ) on Monday March 19, 2007 @07:43AM (#18399913) Journal
    the business case for Open Source Software in the enterprise market is already well established. Some reasons:
    1. The average IQ of the 'EDP Manager' .... (or should I say IQ of the average EDP Manager) seems much higher than elsewhere... so he can't be fooled forever.
    2. Closed source software is so very expensive, enterprises choose to build their own systems; and they mostly choose J2EE and Eclipse. The LAMP stack is packing up with amazing velocity as well. ROI can be seen in a single year, with many apps.
    3. Not much of lock-in has occured already - very few companies have data locked in .doc formats... not many firms have BI or Analytics... so leap-frogging ain't a big issue.
    4. The hardware specs are roughly 10% in the OSS space.... and that matters a lot as well.
    and lately:
    5. It is getting more and more cumbersome pirating Closed source s/w - be it OSes, Office, SQL or whatever. Most EDP mgrs over here have been on the same company for a decade on average; and they're pretty amazed at what OSS can do.

    A recent Java conference (paid, mind you) had over 10,000 attendees! RedHat is doing very well... not many people know or care about Novell... many state govts. have mandated and stipulated Open Source specs...

    Somehow, people this part of the world do not seem to wait for Gartner reports or NYT articles before experimenting with OSS.

    • Flamebait? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cgenman ( 325138 ) on Monday March 19, 2007 @08:20AM (#18400097) Homepage
      It's quite different over here. It's not just a question of experimenting with OSS, it's a combination of seeing the job as deciding between presentations from different vendors and being averse to taking personal risks.

      As I mentioned, it seems like people have stopped doing their own research and now mainly choose between different schpiels from different vendors. Vendor 1 selling you something for 100,000 dollars, and vendor 2 selling it to you for 50,000? Clearly if you go with vendor 2, you've saved the company 50,000 dollars a year. No need to point out vendor 3, who doesn't have a substantial sales team but who sells something identical for 5,000 dollars per year, or an OSS solution which might need 1,000 dollars per year worth of tweaks. Or maybe it makes sense for you to write your own. We generally have a 2-vendor solution, and nobody can fault you for choosing the better of the two, right?

      The risk-aversion deepens. In corporate US if you create a product that everyone else is making, your job is reasonably safe even if it tanks. And, in fact, simply because everyone else is making it, it's likely to tank. On the other hand, if you create something original (i.e. something with an open market) and it tanks, it's more likely that your career will bear the brunt of that mistake. OSS is currently viewed a lot like that. Taking risks is largely regarded as a negative, and certainly regarded as a dangerous career move.

      One does not experiment with OSS, because one does not experiment. One either knows for sure, or one contracts a vendor who will bear the brunt of the responsibility when things might go wrong.

  • The EFF and Activists may come knocking (Score:4, Insightful)

    by tezza ( 539307 ) on Monday March 19, 2007 @07:44AM (#18399921)
    'Never again will you fear the BSA (Business Software Alliance) knocking on your door wanting to perform a software audit.'

    You may however have the EFF or activists [slashdot.org] wanting to inspect your code.
    • The BSA might close your business down, I have never heard of the EFF doing that to anyone, and I cannot see how they could ever do so.

      FLOSS license compliance is an issue that only software vendors (or vendors of products that incorporate software) need even think about. The vast majority of businesses do not sell software (even if they develop software in-house, it is for their own use, so license issues do not arise).
    • I'll explain the difference: in the Linksys case the company didn't supply source code but did use Open Source software, and the GPL clearly states you have to do this.
      Result: Linksys folded and opened its code (this is 2003, mind you) and nowadays we have http://www.openwrt.org/ [openwrt.org] and http://www.dd-wrt.com/ [dd-wrt.com]. And I'm sure Linksys doesn't mind all the interest in its products.
      In the case of the BSA, they bribe disgruntled ex-workers to rat of their ex-bosses. When they knock on your door they're accompanied

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Sique ( 173459 )
      The FSF activists will come and demand a look at your software if and only if you start to distribute the software. I guess if I started to sell selfburned XP or Vista CDs on eBay or from a table at the street corner, there will not only the BSA come upon me.

      The FSF will never look at your computers for the installed and used software at all, because the GPL allows the unlimited use of the software everytime and everywhere. It's just the process of modifying and distributing where they want a look (and if y
      • Umm, Everything every where is kind of misleading and so is only if you distribute it. It gets worse if you use the GPLv3 as it is currently drafted, but they are aksing for source on webprograms and stuff people could use but it doesn't get distributed.

        They are trying to dictate what you can do in the future outside the use of the software with the Anti-patten lawsuite thing. They are attempting to control what you do with your hardware with the anti-DRM clause. There are quite a few other anoyance

        • It gets worse if you use the GPLv3 as it is currently drafted, but they are aksing for source on webprograms and stuff people could use but it doesn't get distributed.

          Your interpretation seems a little non-standard. Anyway, commenting on the GPLv3 at this point is a little pointless as it does not supplant v2 and it does not exist in a final form.

          They are trying to dictate what you can do in the future outside the use of the software with the Anti-patten lawsuite thing.

          Patten was a competent general, but now he's dead, lets not sue dead people.

          They are attempting to control what you do with your hardware with the anti-DRM clause.

          Again, I strongly disagree with your interpretation. It applies only to distributing software, not what I do with my hardware if I'm not distributing software at all.

          A company who has 200 workstations will get rid of them at some point. So lets say they are reimaged with some Opensource solution then sold. Oh, now they are subject becuase they are distributing.

          Yeah, and they have to include the source, big deal and who cares? Just sell

          • Your interpretation seems a little non-standard. Anyway, commenting on the GPLv3 at this point is a little pointless as it does not supplant v2 and it does not exist in a final form.

            Not really non standard. Just apropriate for anyone not sitting back and going why isn't business flocking to open source and then watching most of the fud going around. But your right, It is sensless in debating something that is comunity driven but not released and exists in a form currently that shows the direction it is g

            • Not really non standard. Just apropriate[sic] for anyone not sitting back and going why isn't business flocking to open source and then watching most of the fud[sic] going around.

              Every business I've worked for since graduating undergraduate school has utilized open source software and all the software companies have contributed. Who says business is not flocking to open source?

              What is wirth[sic] debating is how to implement the intended goals of the GPL and weather[sic] or not any current drafts do this to the satisfaction of the comunity[sic] that makes it relevent[sic].

              The intended goals of a given version of the GPL is what it says crossed with how well a given licensor understands what they're agreeing to.

              Thye[sic] are saying if you use GPLv3 software you have to make your hardware in a certain way.

              No. They're saying if you want to redistribute the code I wrote, you have to agree to use it in this way, regardless of if it is used on hardware or software. It

              • Every business I've worked for since graduating undergraduate school has utilized open source software and all the software companies have contributed. Who says business is not flocking to open source?

                Well, don't take my word for it, Just take all the posts to ask.slashdot about how to get thier organization more apt to try OSS. Hell, look at the article's title. It businesses were flocking, then why do we need to make a case? But I'm not doubting you. You experience is indictive of your experience. It do

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by init100 ( 915886 )

            ??? umm, that's not coherent.

            Coherence is not one of his strong points. I've had discussions with him before, but I avoid getting into discussions with him nowadays, the incoherence, bad spelling and often very long posts made me give up. He is full of sheer hatred for the GPLv3, even though it isn't finished, and spouts assertions left and right about the doomsday effects the GPLv3 will mean for OSS.

            They are attempting to control what you do with your hardware with the anti-DRM clause.

            Again, I strongly disagree with your interpretation. It applies only to distributing software, not what I do with my hardware if I'm not distributing software at all.

            His grievances is that TiVo cannot do whatever they want with "their hardware" (i.e. hardware TiVo made) and free software. He think

      • This is all nuance, but:

        Linksys, which got the software under the GPL, had to comply with the GPL as soon as they were selling it in a modified form.
        s/selling/distributing/

  • Oh, nice FUD (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Tim C ( 15259 ) on Monday March 19, 2007 @07:50AM (#18399943)
    "Never again will you fear the BSA (Business Software Alliance) knocking on your door wanting to perform a software audit."

    It's funny, but when *I* say "Nice business, be a shame to see it audited..." people start talking about calling the cops if I don't leave immediately.

    Seriously though, FUD is FUD whoever it comes from; just because they do it doesn't mean it's ok for us to do it too.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by hhlost ( 757118 )
      When I worked for a small company, we used Windows/Visual Studio, and the boss had no problem paying for software that we needed. Still it was a pain in the butt to get approval and then deal with receipts, invoices, shipping, etc. I used FOSS whenever I could.

    • It's funny, but when *I* say "Nice business, be a shame to see it audited..." people start talking about calling the cops if I don't leave immediately.

      Yeah, but you aren't Microsoft. First of all, Microsoft EULAs require you to agree to allow the BSA to audit you. Because of that, calling the cops won't do you a damn bit of good since it's ostensibly legal. Second, Microsoft has proven itself to be above the law anyway.

      The BSA is not FUD; it's a very real threat. You should STFU and do your research befor

  • When you explain that the company's Word and Powerpoint presentations are potentially locked up in a format that belongs solely to Microsoft and nobody else, it gets their attention quickly. Curiously enough, it's usually something they hadn't considered before.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Aladrin ( 926209 )
      That's great until he asks your migration strategy and you reply, "Oh, OpenOffice.org will import them." It blows the whole 'locked up' scenario right out of the water.

      It's not even that great a strategy when starting from scratch, as nothing else opens OO.o documents other than OO.o. Sure, you can guarantee that that version of OO.o will always be free and available, but you can't guarantee it'll run on Windows Vista, or BeOS, or whatever OS they company moves to next, just like MS Office.

      It's true that

      • It's not even that great a strategy when starting from scratch, as nothing else opens OO.o documents other than OO.o.

        Yeah, except for Abiword & Gnumeric, KOffice, IBM Workplace, Google Docs and Spreadsheets, the Mac OS 10.5 version of TextEdit, the next version of WordPerfect...

        Maybe you should do some research [wikipedia.org] next time before spreading FUD, eh?

        By the way, there's no such thing as an "OO.o document." There's a standard file format called "OpenDocument" that OO.O happens to use as its native format,

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Aladrin ( 926209 )
          Well I stand corrected, then. I had it in my head that KOffice (and Star Office, etc) were all forks of OpenOffice, but I see I had totally gotten that wrong as well.

          I'm glad there are enough other apps to open that format out there. Maybe if we can just get people to use them, now.

          • OpenOffice is a derivative of Star Office, and IBM Workplace is a derivative of OpenOffice (I don't think any of them are technically "forks" because they're continuing to share code). Otherwise, all the other things have entirely separate code bases.

  • Right now I use Debian. I use it because I'm lazy.
    However, every now and then, a package will just stop getting updated. Maintainer goes on to better things, maybe. It's not that the software no longer exists, it's just the maintainer isn't making Debian Packages for it anymore. One reason or another. Often it's not "no longer making..." but "isn't making _right_now_, but really intends to at some point" (ie: packages are out of date)

    What Linux currently lacks is an overall packaging scheme to allow people

  • With an Open Source license which does not restrict your use of the software, you can install as many copies of the software as you want. Since there are no licensing fees, you could install two or two hundred seats with no additional costs beyond the labor required to do so.

    Although there are OSS licenses, that allow you an unlimited free use of the software, there are commercial licenses as well. They are basically licenses for proprietary software, with (e.g.) per seat license, just the source is made available to you as well.

    Check the enterprise version of http://sugarcrm.com/ [sugarcrm.com]

    Somebody who writes an article about OSS, should at least mention this "not free" flavor of OSS.

    • Although there are OSS licenses, that allow you an unlimited free use of the software, there are commercial licenses as well.

      While your point is true, you're making a mistake as well. "Free as in beer" and "commercial' are not mutually exclusive. AOL ships a million "free as in beer" CDs all around the country, but it is still a commercial venture. The BSD and GPL licenses are well known and used by businesses to license software they create in order to make a profit. Just because that method is not selling licenses to use said code makes it no less commercial.

  • I've been reading /. for about a year at this point (hence the high UID). It seems to me like most of the articles that I read that champion OSS almost universally use the economic ("free", no licensing cost, etc) argument. How long until OSS starts selling itself based on features and functionality? We are all aware of the potentially lower TCO involved with OSS. We are all aware of the strong security foundation that contributes to the potentially lower TCO. What about the functionality though? What

    • What functionality does OSS deliver to the SMB market that the competetition hasn't already been doing for years?

      The functionality is based upon the individual offering, not the licensing. Does Apache have a better feature set than ISS? Most people think so and it is more suitable to a small business. The point is, you can't talk about the "functionality" of a means of licensing any more than you can talk about the functionality of software developed on the West coast versus the East coast. It doesn't make sense as a correlative measure.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dave562 ( 969951 )
        I was talking about functionality and licensing as seperate selling points. It seems to me that for the most part OSS is sold based on licensing. Will it ever be sold on functionality? From what little exposure I've had to it, it seems to me like the OSS mantra should be, "It's cheap and it's good enough." Where as the Microsoft mantra would be, "It's expensive, and it does things you don't even know you want it to do." (like install malware for you... there ya go, I made the joke for you so you don't h

        • I was talking about functionality and licensing as seperate selling points. It seems to me that for the most part OSS is sold based on licensing. Will it ever be sold on functionality?

          I strongly disagree. "Open source software" the concept is licensing and thus the benefits of that license are what is discussed. Any given application, however, is sold mostly on features, only one of which is the license. No one decides to use apache only because it is open source. They use it because it is stable and secure and extensible. The company I work for builds really expensive specialty servers running on Linux. The bottom line model is about $40K. Another couple hundred bucks for a Windows se

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dave562 ( 969951 )
            Also see: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=227167&cid=18 4 04117 [slashdot.org]

            That is open source being sold based on functionality, not license.

            Just for discussion sake, what is the functionality of those speciality servers that you guys are building?

            Do you disagree with my point that most of the articles out there are too focused on licensing costs/benefits of cheaper licenses and not focused enough on the actual functional benefits that OSS offers over the competition?

            • Just for discussion sake, what is the functionality of those speciality servers that you guys are building?

              Network security and traffic monitoring.

              Do you disagree with my point that most of the articles out there are too focused on licensing costs/benefits of cheaper licenses and not focused enough on the actual functional benefits that OSS offers over the competition?

              I don't understand. Are you talking about the functional benefits of a given piece of software that happens to be OSS or the functional benefits the OSS license it confers to that software? Most articles about OSS talk about the benefits of the license because that is the common factor and that is appropriate. Most articles about a given kind of software, like Web servers, talk about what is common to Web servers, like their ability to serve Web pages quickly and

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by dave562 ( 969951 )
                Are you saying you think there should be articles claiming open source software leads to more/better functions in that software and hence it is better? If so I think that is bunk. There is good OSS that has more functionality than competing closed source software. There is closed source software that has better functionality than alternative OSS offerings. OSS tends to be better only in that the license gives users more options. Aside from that it depends upon the given software being evaluated.

                From what I

                • What I'm getting from this conversation is that you think that so much emphasis is placed on the license because the license is one of the primary motivators that sells the software. "OSS tends to be better only in that the license gives users more options." True?

                  I agree if one assumes that your statement "the license is one of the primary motivators" is a given. I'm not sure that is really true in a commercial setting. From what I've seen at several different companies, having an open source license of any sort is considered a plus and a bigger plus if the software is widely deployed (tracking issue) or if we want to redistribute it. It is usually given as much value as having a license or vendor pre-approved by the legal department. In fact, I'd say open source

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by dave562 ( 969951 )
                    So your take on the subject of licensing is coming from the perspective of someone who is licensing the actual development technology itself. As a developer you definitely prefer to use open source, as opposed to a closed environment like Visual Studio and .Net. I completely understand that. I also understand what you say when you mention that the cost of implementing the feature set is a key factor.

                    I've always perceived the OSS vs Closed Source (Microsoft) debate with regards to licenses from within the

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by jp10558 ( 748604 )
                      Well, first of all, a lot of software seems to be sold at a good enough feaureset for the price. When the price is $0, the featureset often needs to just be somewhere near the commercial competitiors. (Bad car analogy: When buying a car for food deliveries, a $14,000 toyota Echo might well be good enough even though there are additional features in a $40,000 lincoln towncar, and the towncar beats the Echo in every featureset measure for a car, but not enough for the base purpose of driving around with pizza

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by shmlco ( 594907 )
          "It's cheap and it's good enough."

          Why in the world would I want to bet my company on software that thinks it's probably "good enough"? Good enough for what? Good enough for government work? Good enough for my ten year old?

          Get back to me when you can say, "It's cheaper in TOC and it's best-in-class."

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dave562 ( 969951 )
            Why in the world would I want to bet my company on software that thinks it's probably "good enough"?

            You wouldn't and that is the point that I'm trying to make. By making the point I'm trying to encourage whoever writes these reviews and comparisons to branch out on their talking points.

            Like 99Bottles... said, he works for a company that makes boxes that go for $40,000 at the entry level. The companies who are buying those boxes aren't buying them because the Linux licenses are cheaper. Yet it seems to

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by jp10558 ( 748604 )
            Well, I suppose it all would depend on how important buget concerns were. If money isn't an issue, then you'll of course only rate on other metrics. But rarely in the real world is money so far down the metric list that cost doesn't have a large effect, if only at the high end - is the additional 10% higher rating in class worth 300% the cost? I can't believe it's often that that is the case.
  • "So what did swearing off Microsoft entail?
    We looked at all the alternatives. We looked at Apple, but that's owned in part by Microsoft. (Editor's note: Microsoft invested $150 million in Apple in 1997.) We just looked around ..."

    Microsoft has never owned any part of Apple, that stock they bought in '97 was non voting, a "DOJ good faith" effort, trying to dodge a bullet.

    Mr Becker, the c|net's articles writer, glosses over this obvious fact with a link,
    "investment cannot be sold for three years and covers no

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