Key Advantage of Open Source is Not Cost Savings

[poretz]

I smiled really big when I came across this today.

[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Key Advantage of Open Source is Not Cost Savings[/font]
[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Reduced dependence on software vendors appears more important than low cost[/font]
[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Frank Scavo[/font]
Computer Economics recently conducted a survey of visitors to its website regarding the perceived advantages in the use of open source software. Although not a scientific sample, the results are nevertheless startling.

As nearly everyone knows, open source software is a low cost alternative to proprietary software. For example, the open source Linux operating system is commonly seen as a low cost alternative to Microsoft’s Server 2003 operating system, or Sun’s version of Unix. The popularity of open source is seen in the fact that today the largest market share for web servers is held by the open source Apache system.

One might think, therefore, that the key advantage of open source software is its low cost of ownership. But visitors to our website didn’t think so.

Open Source Does Have Advantages
Our survey offered respondents a choice of five advantages for open source.

• Lower total cost of ownership
• Reduced dependence on software vendors
• Easier to customize
• Higher level of security
• Do not see a significant advantage

The results of the survey are shown in the chart below.

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http://www.computereconomics.com/article.cfm?id=1043