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Why is OSS Commercial Software So Expensive?
Posted by
Cliff
on Wed Oct 04, 2006 07:04 PM
from the not-cost-competitive dept.
from the not-cost-competitive dept.
An anonymous reader asks: "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." Why are commercial ports of OSS software so expensive, and what would need to happen before they could be competitive in the future?
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Commercial versions vs. "based on" (Score:5, Insightful)
Commercial versions of OSS products aren't worth it, anywhere, almost ever. Just look at the prices above. In almost every case, go with the closed soruce version, and you'll save yourself a hell of a lot of money.
Now, look at two highly successful products built on open source: Fonality PBX (Asterisk) and Barracuda Spam firewall (Spamassassin). We use 'em both. I'm our entire IT department - just me. I already have too much on my plate, and when we were in the market for a new antispam solution, the natural pick was a Linux-Exim-Spamassassin/RBL frontend to our Exchange 2003 server. Powerful, effective, free (aside from hardware).
Problem: I'm already working tons of overtime - do we pay a contractor $120/hour to come in and try to set a system up, then rely on me to support it when I already don't have time? Or, do we pay a company like Barracuda Networks $1300 for their itty bitty model of the spam firewall and get a system that's guaranteed, backed up by all the time they've spent developing their hardware and frontends, 24/7 support, automatic updates, and license-free monitoring and filtering? I don't have the numbers with me, but the cost in staff + contractor time + hardware vs. the Barracuda system (which is overkill for our little network) was something like 3:1.
Re:Commercial versions vs. "based on" (Score:5, Interesting)
Need a domain server? I can take a spare box, install a base Fedora and bind in about 20 minutes. Or add bind to an underutilized server in about 2 minutes. MS just can't compare when it comes to small to mid size business servers. FOSS installs faster, has fewer issues when hardening, and in general is easier to secure, particularly when we are talking about using only one or two services. (block every damn port but 53 and move ssh to an unused high port and open that one up.)
On the desktop, however, it has been another issue. I can't even get my USB wireless ethernet cards to work in Linux, and there are virtually no apps for small to midsized businesses. Most of the solutions that I have looked at on Linux cost about 20 to 50 times more than similar products on Windows (yes, really 20 to 50 times more) so we can't AFFORD to move to "free" software on the desktop yet. I know this will change, but I was convinced 10 years ago that it would have changed within 10 years....
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Re:Commercial versions vs. "based on" (Score:5, Interesting)
I run a small business... so let me answer your question, but I disagree with the grandparent, so I'll also include some answers, though he's right that there are big gaps.
- Accounting: GnuCash is good, I can't use it because my accountant doesn't support it.
- Some kind of basic organization ala MS Project... dunno personally, but MSProject sucks too.
- Visio equivalent... dunno
- Defect tracking: Bugzilla
- Source Control: SVN Obliterates some of the 6 figure competitors IMHO
- Email: Thunderbird
- Contact management: Yes, we have choices, but the propertiary ones are better IMHO
- Inventory: Dunno, can't say the commercial ones are any good either, guess that's why I'm writing one right now
- Scheduler... sorry Sunbird & the like aren't up to part yet... still gotta give Evolution an install, but I'm busy
- Backup solutions: OSS is way ahead of the commercial ones here IMHO
- Databases: PostgreSQL is a winner for me
- An OS that supports my eight monitor setup easily, stuck on windows
- Remoting software: Putty is the best CLI one I've ever seen, TightVNC is good for most of my stuff, but I prefer to use RemoteDesktop when appropriate (when I can lock the screen.. yes I know rdesktop is great, not a server tho)
- Internal chat network: OSS slaughters propertiary
List goes on and on I imagine, every small business needs something a little different, that's why the economy loves us so much, we put a huge percentage of our income back into operating costs. But, as you might have determined from my disjointed comments, my customers love me because I employ the best tool for the job philosophy... I ask two questions, and in this order: Can it do the job well? What's it cost? Often OSS is better, often it's not.Parent
Re:Commercial versions vs. "based on" (Score:5, Interesting)
We are not a technology company, we sell stuff. Our software needs are about inventory, manufacturing, distribution, wholesale, retail, ecommerce, and include 3 basic product catagories, 5 different price levels, 2 methods of sales, 3 locations, importing products from different countries, UPS, FedEx, LTL trucking, dedicated trucking, tracking, dropshipping, contract manufacturing, marketing, and a lot of other things that most companies with 15 people don't do. I have been here 13 years, and no one does it like us. Then again, most of the companies in my industry from 13 years ago are now out of business.
We are stuck in the middle and have unique needs, which is why I have spent the last several years kludging stuff together with Perl and doing most things with my 2nd or 3rd choice of methods. We are not a traditional small business, but we are not a full blown enterprise, and there is a complete dirth of products available for companies like us, both on the WinTel platform, but particularly in the FOSS arena, because there are not many companies like us to write for.
We dont use schedulers or calenders, source control, chat networks, bug tracking, etc. Not every Slashdotter works for a tech company. Some of us sell the stuff you guys buy with your extra money. I dual boot linux and MS so I can game and get work done. On the server side, we have used Linux for many years (think RH 5.x), including samba, bind, apache, etc. but for the heavy apps, they just simply do not exist for mid sized companies. Yet.
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Support (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, ya it does (Score:5, Interesting)
1) Patches. MS releases patches for Windows and everything associated with it, and tests those patches to make sure they work. If an incompatibility is found (it's rare one survives the initial testing) it gets fixed. Now of course there is OSS that does that, but there's no guarantee. With MS it's not really a question of if the software will be patched during it's supported life. Same deal with supported OSS software like RHEL. Sure, Fedora also does patches, but they aren't tested like the RHEL ones are, and if the developers of the component don't release a patch, they aren't likely to patch it for them.
2) The knowledge base. MS has a massive knowledge base that is really very good. I use it all the time at work. When a Windows system bluescreens do I start a debugger? Hell no, I'm not a programmer. I write down the details and look it up in the knowledge base. The answers tend to be just want I needed. If some weird problems comes up, again I go looking in the knowledge base. It is a central, easy to search, repository of solutions tested by MS themselves. You don't get that with a no-charge OSS product. Sure there are news group posts, and IRC logs and such out there but man, tracking down the answer can be hell, if anyone has found an answer at all.
3) Vendor support. When a vendor sells you a system with Windows, they are guaranteeing hardware support (at least if they aren't shady). When Gateway sells me a rackmount server with Windows installed, I know that it will be working, and I know that it will have drivers for all it's hardware. However when I try and install FC4 on it, maybe it doesn't work. In fact what does happen is it kernel panics on install (we still have never figured out why). Should it not work, I can call them and get it fixed, if it's a Windows problem they'll call MS and get it fixed. You can get the same thing with Linux, but only buying a system with a supported Linux distro on it, which is usually an enterprise Linux.
Those are not at all worthless support resources. Support doesn't necessarily mean holding your hand through configuration, it just means ensuring that all the resources you need are available. You get that with commercial solutions, be they OSS based or not. It's not the same as a support contract, but often is what people need.
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Re:Support (Score:5, Informative)
The only way that they can charge more for the "commercial" version AND enforce their right to limit how you use the software is for them to build a completely proprietary project that runs on Linux, then they can license their complete, compiled (with or without source), and wholy owned product however they chose, but if they choose to license under the GPL then they cannot impose the use restrictions.
Nonsense.
Qt is licensed under two licenses: The GPL and Trolltech's commercial development license.
If you use the GPL version, which you acquire from wherever you like, then your application must also be licensed under the GPL, or you have no legal right to distributed it. Technically, you had no legal right to create it, except by accepting the terms of the GPL, because your application is a derived work and creation of derived works is reserved to the copyright holder.
If you buy the commercial license, you can sell your software as closed source, and you can redistribute the run-time files that Trolltech provides you, or that you build from the copy of the code that Trolltech provides you.
Code which was originally written under the GPL is not eligible for integration into a work under the commercial license. Not because Trolltech is adding requirements to the GPL, but because Trolltech's commercial license excludes such software from being linked to and distributed with their commercial version of Qt. You can't do it under the commercial license, and you obviously can't do it under the GPL.
There's no weird copyright theory here, just a couple of different licenses.
In practice, of course, lots of people start commercial Qt projects prior to purchasing development licenses. I've never heard of Trolltech making any attempt at all to curb this, beyond simply saying that it's not permitted.
Parent
It's the support costs. (Score:5, Informative)
How much from Microsoft [microsoft.com] for your $140?
Win XP Pro OEm - support? (Score:5, Informative)
And the OEM version of Windows XP Pro is supported by whom?
I don't know what support Red Hat provides with the $299 version but I know supposrt is primarily what you're paying for or everyone would be using Fedora Core.. Please compare apples to apples - last I heard OEM versions including zero vendor support.
Much of your cost is because you are "commercial" (Score:5, Insightful)
You might want to consider your business model - can your product be FOSS too, and then YOU charge the big bucks for support, etc.?
Pay for open source??? (Score:5, Interesting)
Um... You're *not* paying for the software. (Score:5, Informative)
You're paying for official support and services. Presumably 24/7 telephone, onsite if necessary. You're paying for people and their expertise not software.
However, there is a good point. Support is expensive, there's a market out there for lower cost support services.
Broken Logic (Score:5, Insightful)
You can compare QT to GDI+ all you like, but GDI+ works on one platform, and QT works on many. Expect to pay more for an increased feature set. Law of the land, open versus closed never has and likely never will have any effect on that.
They already are. You can tell because Microsoft shills like yourself are pretending to have questions about them not being competitive on slashdot.
Apples to oranges (Score:5, Insightful)
You say you want official support. Then you proceed to compare an officially-supported copy of RedHat Enterprise Linux to an OEM copy of Windows XP. Well, I hate to break it to you, but that OEM copy of XP comes with no support. If you read the agreement, it says you as the system builder are responsible for supporting that copy once installed. You don't even get the installation support that comes with the $300 retail XP box. All you get is Windows Update, and the opportunity to hear the Microsoft rep tell you to call the company you bought your computer from. The same with Visual Studio. The commercial software isn't cheaper as far as support goes, they just aren't quoting you the real price until after you're committed.
Apples vs Oranges (Score:5, Informative)
I think a big part of the problem is that you're comparing different things and wondering why they have different prices.
Qt vs C#: Sure, C# is cheaper, but the price you quoted for Qt is for triple-platform licenses, and C# doesn't get you that much cross-platform support. Yes, Mono gives you support for other platforms, but it differs in many respects from the Windows version, whereas Qt is very consistent across all of them. Documentation and support for Qt is vastly better than the comparable C# support for non-Windows environments, (and somewhat better than for Windows as well).
Red Hat vs XP: Red Hat contains far more functionality than XP. Depending on exactly what you're doing, you very likely have to buy additional software for XP. Also, how much support does that $140 XP license get you? Assistance with installation, and that's about it. Red Hat provides a lot more, and it costs a lot more. If you don't think you'll need the extra support, then don't buy it, and Red Hat will be a lot cheaper than XP.
RT Linux vs WinCE/VxWorks: I can't argue here, not at the prices you quoted, and since you said you got lousy support from the Linux vendor (who was it, BTW?). Perhaps you just needed a different vendor? How about Wind River (makers of VxWorks, for those who don't know).
Cygwin vs Windows Services for Unix: Depending on what you need, SFU may be fine. As long as you're just using the stuff provided by Microsoft, SFU is pretty good. If you want to be able to download any random Linux/Unix package off the net and have good odds that it will build and run, though, forget it, SFU is completely inadequate while Cygwin will do a good job. Note also that SFU comes with no support, unlike that commercial Cygwin.
In nearly all cases, I think the core issue is that the prices quoted for OSS support (a) buy you better support than what you'll get in the closed-source case, (b) give you more in functionality, flexibility, or both and (c) are really intended for bigger companies who are less strapped for cash and who have a bigger need of the security blanket the support contracts provide.
Your company would probably have been better off skipping the support contracts, using the software for no cost, and putting the cash aside to pay an independent consultant or two in case you get in a jam. You can get extremely high-quality support for most OSS for small consulting fees, just by hopping onto the project mailing list, identifying a handful of heavy contributors who know the area you're concerned with, and then privately offering them money for their time.
Of course, if your management is too uptight to take that approach, and too tight to buy the OSS support, you should go with the closed-source offerings -- and then keep your fingers crossed that you don't have to rely on Microsoft's support. Wind River's support is good, in my experience, but the rest of the stuff you mentioned is from Microsoft.
Re:Some Theories... (Score:5, Interesting)
Which would mean that all software begins life as insanely expensive and then comes down in price? My experience sez that's not the case.
Quality and reliability
Yeah, I've never had to track down stupid issues in open source software. Never!
Support
Since the common wisdom seems to be that Microsoft charges a lot of money for nothing and it's super-easy to replace "propietary" software with FLOSS equivalents (MySQL vs. Oracle, GiMP vs. Photoshop, etc) I'd say that's about the only thing you could conceivably be charging for, other than packaging and/or integration. So I suppose the issue here is really "why are support contracts so expensive?" rather than "why is the software so expensive?".
Either way, my (relatively limited) experience with FLOSS vendors is that they tend to be a bit arrogant in the sense that they'll tell you that whatever you're using right now is "shit" and they have the solution to all of mankind's problems (including yours), and then they have absolutely no idea how to create things like tiered pricings and segment/volume discounts for different types of customers. That's something commercial software vendors do very well. The commercial ones will also tell you that they'll get you off the "shit", but then they can walk the walk. FLOSS vendors seem to be all talk.
In our case we ended up going without a support contract (insanely expensive) and hired a guy that was an expert with the software. He did all the customization work we needed for about a year and he made a good $50K with virtually guaranteed future contract work. The "vendor" (if one can call them that) ended up losing out to the hacker kid in mom's basement - literally.
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Re:Some Theories... (Score:5, Informative)
If he did submit a bug and has an open case with Microsoft for it, it is free. Bugs, hotfixes and licensing cases are (and always have been) free.
Admittedly it's been a few years since I dealt much with MS software, but back around 2000 or so, I found some bugs in VC++ and it cost us $199 per incident to report them. I guess they called it "support" because an MS engineer looked at the problem for a while before deciding it was a bug, but it still seemed like paying money to report bugs to me.
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Re:Not a Good Business Model for Enterprise (Score:5, Insightful)
How is anything you just said unique to F/OSS? The quality of proprietary software is variable, and so is the support. The quality of documentation for proprietary software is likewise spotty. Proprietary software projects die on the vine all the time; at least F/OSS projects can be easily picked up again, if there is any interest.
As for the article's premise, that commercially supported F/OSS software is expensive - how is that any different than proprietary software? There's a reason that Paul Allen and Larry Ellison are in a boat building competition. I really with the Slashdot editors would spend a least an iota of energy attempting to filter out the trolls; but maybe they just enjoy the flamefests.
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Re:Not a Good Business Model for Enterprise (Score:5, Insightful)
What I find surprising is that, in the few responses I've skimmed (including yours), I haven't seen anyone mention that these companies need to pay programmers. There's this tremendous myth that OSS is all written by good Samaritans in their spare time, and companies that sell it commercially simply rebrand it, box it, and ship it.
It's like people think that Linux is free, so why can't Redhat distribute it for almost nothing? Redhat and Novel employ programmers, too. In fact, the paid programmers make a tremendous contribution to all of this FOSS we benefit from. That's right, sometimes it's the big companies' work that makes the FOSS version so good, so the commercial companies aren't getting all that work for free.
I don't mean to insult anyone here, and I don't want to quibble about the ratio of good Samaritan contributions vs. paid contributions. Still, you can't discount that there are Redhat-employed programmers working on Redhat, and sometimes Redhat's work ends up in the free stuff.
So what I'm saying is, businesses selling commercial OSS have the same costs as a closed shop, even though they receive some free help. And for all the free help they get, these savings are offset by the fact that people don't have to buy their software. So let's say they cut their programming costs in 50% (just a number I'm plucking out of the air), their revenue is also cut by 75% (another made up number) by people who would buy it, but decided instead to download for free.
And this doesn't even take into account the whole dynamic of competition in commercial OSS. In short, for whatever Redhat spends in development, Novel also gets that work for free, and vice versa. Now maybe Novel doesn't want to use that work, and maybe Redhat is benefitting from Novel in just the same ways, but it sure does complicate the business model.
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Re:Not a Good Business Model for Enterprise (Score:5, Informative)
Not the kind of stuff this guy is talking about though. Personally I think the problem is he's comparing apples to oranges... I don't have numbers, and I'm not going to go get them, but let me point out a few of the obvious flaws in the summary IMO.
- RHE to WinXP OEM: Uh, no... Ubuntu to WinXP OEM, RHE to Win2k3 Server
- QT to MSVS2005: Why not go GTK+ vs. C# Express, both free
- Embedded Linux
... that's about volume, if you're embedding linux you should be saving a small fortune per appliance vs. putting WinCE on each of them, but yeah, the development aint cheap. - Cygwin commercial vs. Windows Unix tools, I think you're mis-understanding what each of those can do.
Right tool for the job, sometimes it's OSS, sometimes it's not... but the above post is like me complaining about the cost of steel vs. plastic because a caterpillar bulldozer is pricier than my nephew's sand bucket.Parent
Re:Not a Good Business Model for Enterprise (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Not a Good Business Model for Enterprise (Score:5, Funny)
Enterprise support is availabe, but most of the time a qualified individual can search the KB articles just as fast the the dork on the other end of the phone in Microsoft.
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Re:Not a Good Business Model for Enterprise (Score:5, Informative)
That depends on the project. In OpenBSD, for example, you are not allowed to commit any code without also committing a corresponding update to the documentation (and your code must be commented according to the OpenBSD KNF guidelines; see man style for more information). Other projects have less strict commit rules.
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Re:Not a Good Business Model for Enterprise (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:He required support (Score:5, Informative)
He says that QT costs too much so we goes to VS for around 700 dollars. Does that 700 dollars include support? No it does not. He just threw that out because he is a troll. He is comparing the cost of QT + support to VS without support and picking a solution that only works on windows. C# + GTK is available for free from mono which he also completely ignores.
The guy decides to drop QT because it costs more and moves to C# without once considering java with swing or swt or anything else? He never considers Mono and goes directly to paying for VS while not buying support from MS.
The guy is either an idiot, shill, astro turfer or a troll.
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