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SSChampion
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Right there with Babe
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Good point Jeff - not many users of MySQL, for example, know or care that it is Open Sauce, never mind ever look at the sauce code. Having said that, how many of us would really reap any benefit from looking at the sauce code?
In terms of licence fees, when you start rolling out dozens of VMs, remember that each VM running a Windows OS will need a licence. VMs are often used to separate out services into separate OSs to prevent any interoperability problems. This can greatly increase the number of OSs you need, and thus the cost.
A Linux VM costs you nothing in licence fees. That alone could save a lot of cash.
Andy
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Forum Newbie
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Having worked in shops with mixed (Linux/Microsoft) and single (Microsoft) environments, adopted open source projects and developed in-house solutions, and worked with SQL Server and MySql I see advantages and disadvantages of each approach. While the initial up-front costs are usually lower with open source solutions I have found that over time those advantages tend to disappear. In my experience, for example with an open source CRM system, while the UI was powerful and appealing to the end users, the lack of documentation, non-optimal implementation details, and cryptic responses to support requests wound up costing many more hours (man months) in engineering resources than initially expected. In general once you have to start modifying the underlying application - and most open source products that I have used have been lacking in the functionality we required, although most have been good foundations that we were able to expand on - you start running up the engineering hours, and often wind up with a final product that does not have the performance of the one you would have built from scratch.
If you are not looking for someone else to have built your business application then there certainly are some offerings such as source code repositories (Subversion for example), bug tracking applications, and the dot Lucene search engine that are powerful applications which can be used with no modifications and quickly add productivity for free.
I am not impressed with MySql as I have experienced table corruption on more than one occasion and the lack of functionality requires more work arounds than using SQL Express (if you want a free database solution).
As long as you have to have an IT staff to maintain your systems, then the costs savings of open source over the long run tend, in my experience, to disappear. And while running 'cheap' Linux systems sounds appealing, most likely you still need in-house IT expertise that can support Windows systems as the clerical, sales, and management teams usually are not going to have Linux on their desktop. I agree with others that the cloud concept will likely eliminate some of the initial cost advantages for running open source systems and should help in reducing the long term in-house IT costs.
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SSChampion
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Nice post above. It highlights some interesting things.
I'd still think that if you started with a good Open Source solution, you might end up with something better in the long run with a good staff. You can definitely make changes that you need to make, or improve the performance of things as you find issues. That's not something you can do with closed source packages.
Of course then you often end up branching and building your own solutions, which is fine if you want to do that. If that's the case, perhaps you want to just do that at the beginning.
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SSC Eights!
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blandry (11/18/2008)
I'm not sure you can link the OpenSource movement to the economic downturn directly - though I believe there may be some connection. Microsoft themselves are, to some companies, sealing their own doom not only with Vista, but with Office 2007.
One of our companies specializes in conversions and migrations and though business is going well, we have seen a trend developing where some (and a growing number of) IT decision makers are shunning the entire scope of Office 2007 products. Microsoft has been banking on the backbone of XML to drive the interoperability of their Office products (and more). But as some are more-than-aware, there are many who see XML as bulky, clunky, way too overly complex for what it does, and most of all a great leap backwards in interoperability. Sure, as Microsoft goes, so goes the world, but with almost 30 years in the business I am very surprised at what I am seeing and hearing in the field. There are always complaints about MS, but these are now in many cases, becoming a lot more than mere whining.
We have been surprised that some companies tell us they will not be converting to Office 2007 and will be giving strong consideration to the OpenSource world. One oft-heard reason is Microsoft's dropping of version control in the 2007 suite - its no longer supported. Another complaint is the alteration of formats in Word, Excel and Access files poses simply too much risk to huge bases of software documents and sub-systems. Yet another oft-heard complaint is the great alteration in the interface in Office 2007 - it just presents way too steep a learning curve for companies with thousands of workers used to older versions. There are these and many other valid complaints out there, brewing up a potential storm.
Although it is not yet a torrent, there is a steady drumbeat growing where IT decision makers are considering OpenSource like never before. I hear these comments tied to Microsoft's failure more than any economic reasons. Vista is considered largely doomed, and Office 2007 appears as though it might go the same way to a growing number of large companies unwilling to trust Microsoft's vision anymore.
As a former IBM-er, OpenSource can work but its marketing that I think has always staved that off. That is, MS has the huge marketing power that historically has been the wall to OpenSource. That wall seems now, often crumbling. So, the economy might be playing a role here, but I think more, its Microsoft's vision that has really gone awry in the eyes of a growing number of professionals and companies.
Red Hat and anyone that sells a Linux distro offers support. Red Hat Enterprise Server is around $800 a year for phone support during business hours. Linux is written by professional programmers at IBM, Red Hat, Sun and all the other brand name tech companies
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