Comments on: Why choose proprietary software over open source? Survey says!

Why do companies opt for proprietary software over open source? The answer may surprise you.

[Ed_Dodds]

Part of this is a marketing focus challenge

If OSI or similar modified their logo and created an FOSS Professional Services Guild badge firms with OS Pro Staff could easily build more market awareness.

[baileysmoth]

oh ffs, it's simple

It comes down to one simple thing. Software Companies who write proprietary code hire sales and marketing people to go into third party businesses and make the product more appealing while open source software communities sit around crying about how nobody uses them.

[reedhedges]

OSS vs. Software Vendors

The most interesting thing to me about that survey is that the top items for open source are advantages of open source itself; by nature proprietary software cannot offer those advantages. The top advantages of proprietary software in that survey are actually advantages (historically) provided by proprietary software vendors. So it's an opportunity for OSS companies to provide those services.

[avanabs]

Survey reflects study I did at prior employer, BUT

It also leaves out some fundamental differences between Open Source community TCO (yup...licenses are expensive, but often only 7-8% of the TCO) and the TCO for commercial products.

For example, all the things that make up RASP are seriously missing in (most) community projects...effectively putting the customer in the position of becoming their own integrator and software vendor. If you don't need these capabilities, great...but if you think you are getting the equivalent of the person centuries of commercial development for free, then remember there is no such thing as free lunch!

OS utilization can work out really well if you carefully consider the whole picture, but all too often the soft costs associated with taking on all the missing parts gets ignored in the enthusiasm to save on license costs.

In one recent study, the "free and open" software packages actually cost significantly more even in the first year...and MUCH more over the 4 year life cycle.

The benefits of OS can be in fact huge, but ignoring the real costs associated with the entire project can become a career defining decision.

[fak3r]

How about support?

My argument is that with open source the expensive 3rd party support contact can (should) be replaced with in house expertise. http://fak3r.com/2007/09/24/software-support-must-evolve-with-open-source/