Two weeks ago while attending LISA (the Large Installation System Administration conference), I heard many times that open source software is the way to go; after all, “you can’t beat free”. During one of the classes, someone from a university IT department pointed out that open source software is “free like a free puppy”. To the bemusement of the attendees, he explained his point. A free puppy still comes with costs –training, shots, food, etc.
Most IT decision makers understand that “free” software really isn’t free, so what factors go into the decision to use open source software over something proprietary?
Numerous surveys have been done to try and determine why someone would choose open source software. Surprisingly, few people rank cost as the number one reason (this figure varies, but is often around one in five). Although the software comes with no initial upfront fee, it still needs to be supported and maintained. Factors like staff training can add significantly to the cost of supporting a platform, as can the need to develop management tools that integrate into the infrastructure. Vendors, like Red Hat, offer training programs and certifications to help companies find staff with the necessary skills. Red Hat also offers tools to help manage an enterprise built on their flavor of Linux, along with their own technical support. None of these options are free, even though the core operating system is open source.
That said, one area where lower costs can be seen is in scalability. Once you have the staff at your disposal, you can rapidly scale out an open source platform without additional license fees (assuming you go with a truly free OS). Proprietary software (such as Windows) comes with a per-instance cost that grows with your server population. This is also true for a “supported” open source OS like Red Hat.
