'Free' is the new 'cheap' for software tools

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Partially Agree

We have been using open source db's and other dev products/tools for some time and yes it's true that in most cases if you want a structured organization such as IBM, Microsoft or Oracle to provide you support you would have to pay a price for it. However, in the last four plus years we have not ever had to call in any help. Why? Because of the open source community. We post our questions when necessary and we get a plethora of options to try out. Nine and a half times out of ten we resolve our problem - easily and in short time. And the other side of this practice is that we always get better support than many of those other structured companies can offer - MS anyone?

The support model is and has changed just as the open source dev tools, databases, etc. models. Where I used to pay hefty annual fees for various product support, this has been reduced by half and I expect to reduce it even further in the next year or two. This same process allows me to decide where best to apply my support budget not the vendor who, in many cases, relies heavily on it's annual support fee structure.

However, I will say that many of the new business models out there today are for support services for open source products. I have a couple of friends that are doing very well at it. Their model is based on support as a core product but they also provide the other valuable services such as technology transfer, rapid development, etc.

So, I don't have any problems with free software - first because I went into it with an open mind and open eyes applying the model where needed best, and second because I truly believe that the "hay days" of vendor control are truly coming to an end.

Posted by: Sheeva   Posted on: 02/02/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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