Open Source: It Costs Too Much

Our startup honestly wanted to use OSS products. We do not want to spend time for any OSS bug fixing so our main requirement was -official support for all OSS products-. We thought were prepared to pay the price for OSS products, but then we got a price sticker shock. Now behold: QT is $3300 per seat. We have dropped the development and rewrote everything to C# (MSVS 2005 is ~$700). Embedded Linux from a reputable RT vendor is $25,000 per 5 seats per year. We needed only 3 seats. We had to buy 5 nevertheless. The support was bad. We will go for VxWorks or WinCE in our next product. Red Hat Linux WS is $299. An OEM version of Windows XP Pro is ~$140. A Cygwin commercial license will cost tens of thousands of dollars and is only available for large shops. We need 5 seats. Windows Unix services are free. After all, we have decided that the survival of our business is more important for us then 'do-good' ideas. Except for that embedded Linux (slated for WinCE or VxWorks substitution), we are not OSS shop anymore. [1]

Microsoft has been arguing the TCO part of the equation for a long time now. Are people finally starting to listen?     

[1] http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/04/0452244

9 Comments

  • I totally, agree. Except from the price tags themselves, I also found that software in the OSS market is also misaligned (new versions of software A demanding an operating system from 2004, and software B which A is depending on requiring another version of the same operating system from 2005). The list goes on and on.

  • BTW, I blogged about this a while ago.

  • Hmmm, you could have a fair point but you lost the plot when you said "..then 'do-good' ideas...". If you think software companies only use OSS to be do-gooders, then you are way off. Software companies use OSS because it many times is better than MS products and APIs.

    And then, when you compare support. My previous company (5,000+ employees, US/Everett based) has reported several issues with Windows CE and most of the times we did not receive any help at all. The best time was when they did not reply via email but phone to say "..windows messaging is sometimes flaky.." and rounded of by saying "if you find any bugs, we will not fix it". So, their support costs can be low because they dont actually handle support.

  • OSS is only cost-beneficial for groups who know the software or take the time to learn it instead of paying needlessly for unneccsary 'technical support'. I guess MS is always the easy way out...

  • If your team is technically proficient, open source is much cheaper. If your team is technically mediocre, the output is going to suck anyway.

    The free versions of linux are much farther ahead of the so called "supported" commercial versions. As a startup you shouldn't be paying for support contracts anyway. Using them is costly, slow and time consuming. Those are for Fortune 500 companies with share holders. Startups don't have time or money for that. If you're a startup, go to the bookstore, buy a $20 book on Fedora, and read it. That's your support.

  • That's it. MS dev. tools are for technically weak people, most of time no one know what is going on.

  • $25k for an embedded linux distro? Mmm, there must be 10 free ones on the web. BTW, I think the beauty of these minimal linux installs is that you can still run all you want on it and expand the functionality as you need it.

    Personally, I think Linux+Java2SE is the way to go for these embedded devices. You simply develop on your desktop and deploy on a Pentium II 300Mhz clone type of CPU (not needing any active cooling etc).
    These things are cheap and easy to develop for.
    We did a project with 600+ installs using this approach and I don't recall paying ANY licenses for all the open-source software we used. The rising of the open source Java VM's is just adding fuel to this as you can strip down the VM to just what you actually need on the box.

    The thing is of-course, you need to know one or two things about your trade... and you need to be capable of having ideas besides those off a Microsoft sales rep.

  • I recommended eRCP/Eclipse/SWT + J9 for embeded.
    you can write for any OS you want...

  • A simple buch of FUD. Compare Apples to Oranges. Like RH 4.0 to XP.

    RH vs. XP.

    Did You noticed that RH is server OS? Tried to set up IIS on XP, and serve production applications? What about limitations (like no more than 50 concurrent IP connections etc.). You must choose - You need something to serve something (RH is best option IMO), or You need desktop OS (XP is better IMO). Comparing XP to RH WS dosen't make sense.

    QT vs WinForms?

    What You chosen QT? When You don't need portablity between OSes it's stupid to choose QT. It's not problem with QT it's with You. Really. You rewote all Your applications in C#? Nice. Probably You chosen wrong product at the very beginning. It's like buing Mercedes to carry pigs...

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