Open Source Costs: A Contrarian View
September 20, 2009
I am skeptical about broad generalizations about “costs” and even more doubtful about “cheap”. My radar lights up when I see these terms applied to software and systems. If you don’t know how to get into your child’s Facebook.com account, the cost of hacking into the system can be pretty high, especially if you have to hire a person with a particular technical capability to accomplish what seems to be a trivial objective. There is a non linearity in software costs that most people don’t want to know about. Unfortunately when these “costs” become visible, the ensuing excitement can lead to staff turnover or big problems for the organization who found “a certain blindness” more desirable that clear sightedness.
When I read “Open Source Is the Freedom of Choice, Not Necessarily the Cheaper Option,” my microwave detector beeped. For me, the key point in the write up seemed to be:
Admittedly Open Source can be cheaper if you think of the code itself not costing anything. However nothing is free, time and therefore money will have been spent creating and modifying that code. To have adequate technical support and installation businesses should be prepared to value the product and the support provided. With Open Source you have the freedom of choice. You can choose to look at the online documentation and the wealth of technical books out there to implement what you need, you can also choose to support the Open Source Product. Or you can choose to hire an experienced professional (or even pay for training in house) to implement and support the product for you. Saying a product is cheaper can be interpreted that the product is somehow lesser than the competition. I do not feel that this is always the case, superior products can develop from close contact between developers and their clients. This is the value add that Open Source can bring to the table.
The author is not a coder, so if he / she were involved in either a proprietary or open source project, the “cost” of getting the system to work depends on the time and the billing rate of the people involved, the cost of lost opportunity, and the expense of any infrastructure or gizmos required to make the system work in a way somewhat proximate to the system specification.
Open source eliminates a license fee. The problem is that license fees for some mainstream systems in search are declining. One big software company has included an industrial strength search system with other software products. In effect, the licensing fee for the search and content processing system is zero because it is buried in other elements on the invoice.
My view is that the folks with technical expertise can save some money on both open source and proprietary software. The clueless—regardless of whether the software is open source or proprietary—will pay almost the same to get their system running, customizing it, and optimizing it for the organization’s specific needs. Just my opinion. The key drivers in cost boils down the capabilities of the individuals involved in a project.
Stephen Arnold, September 20, 2009
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