Hi, Just an idea that crossed my mind today that I think is missing from the usual cost comparisons on free vs proprietary software:
Let's ignore all non-monetary arguments for FLOSS for a moment. In the enterprise environment, the pure cost of a software license including maintenance/software assurance/hardware/etc. is seldom a hindrance to its adoption. If the value of a product can be argued, the money can usually be found. One argument that has not been broadly made to my awareness, though, is the cost of compliance. License compliance is such a murky issue that many companies don't even know if they are in compliance w.r.t. software licensing and reserve funds in case any software vendor audits them and decides they are violating their license terms. With free software, I would argue that the main cost benefit is not the potential lower cost of ownership, but the huge threat of compliance issues. When operating FLOSS products, there's no need to ask yourself whether you have licensed all the CPU cores, or how to count data sources to your database. There's no need to get a quote for the next price tier before scaling things up. I think it's good that we usually don't try to win people over with the price argument, but I thought I just put this out there... Cheers, Johannes _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] This mailing list is covered by the FSFE's Code of Conduct. All participants are kindly asked to be excellent to each other: https://fsfe.org/about/codeofconduct
