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Opinion: open source value transcends tough times
Oct. 24, 2008

Am I the only one turned off by ads touting the advantages of open source software during tough economic times? They strike me as unsavory, like an ambulance-chasing lawyer tucking his card into the pocket of an unconscious or at least severely sedated IT industry.

How bad off is IT? Microsoft appears to be doing just fine, according to its quaterly report released yesterday -- though it acknowledged feeling the effects of Linux's success in netbooks. In the bigger picture, meanwhile, NASDAQ's "Computer" index for the year shows a black diamond run sure to see plenty of wipe-outs.

Tough economic times mean real tragedies for real people -- layoffs, salary cuts, reduced hours, increased stress, lost homes, fewer vacations, and lower quality-of-life in general. Bad times call for empathy and compassion, not commercial exploitation. Using other people's problems as a lever for your own commercial gain just isn't decent.

Furthermore, touting open source software as merely a lower-cost option positions it as an also-ran, something to use when you can't afford better. I'd rather see open source software compete on the basis of real technical merit. I think much of it can, nowadays.

Or, if a company really wants to tout their offering as a cost-saver, let them provide a real cost-benefits analysis, not simply invoke the specter of budget cuts. Upfront licensing costs are often the least of it, where software deployment costs are concerned.

There's little doubt that open source software is a great boon to industrialized economies around the world. Saving companies from paying licensing fees for commercialized software is hardly foremost, however. The real value is in distributing development costs across entire industries, so that innovation happens at an ever-higher level. Ultimately, it's innovation that drives value in software, not simply how much the bits cost.


-- Henry Kingman


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