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The age old war between the two technologiesopen source and proprietary software is still very much on. Like the proverbial good versus evil clash, one camp is eager to paint the other camp in black.
Lost somewhere in the debate is the real issue. The question one really needs an answer for is which of the two is cheaper, secure, and easier to maintain.
What is in a debate?
One of the issues that lot many experts often raise is: are open source and proprietary comparable in the first place?
Open source has been around for several decades, thanks to the mainframe legacy, where the computer belonged to the technologist. A breed of technologists emerged who believed in technology for the sake of technology. The proprietary software is a relatively later phenomenon when the likes of Bill Gates and Paul Allen started dealing in software for profit.
For the last three decades, the war between open source and proprietary has continued, with the technologists driving open source movements and marketers gunning for proprietary stuff.
As such, the very characteristics of the two wares have been different, much like the chalk and the cheese. And yet, in the unending battle to be one-up, both camps have also picked up some good features from the other side and improved their offerings.
However, for the IT managers, whose prime concern is to ensure that their IT infrastructure is safe, secure, up and running, what really matters is what is affordable and causes lesser headache. Indeed, there has to be a comparison to arrive at the right IT decision, but the ideological debate is frivolous. The two paradigms are to be compared only from an operational standpoint.
Lets do the comparison.
Is it TCA versus TCO?
One will certainly like to start with a cost comparison. So for example, how much does it cost to put up a Microsoft server versus a Linux server with similar sets of specifications? That should tell us the story. Sadly, it does not.
The devil apparently lies in the detail. So while open source systems are indeed inexpensive to implement compared to proprietary systems, there are a lot of other costs involved, namely administrative and training costs. Because of the pervasiveness of proprietary systems like Microsoft, getting people to work on MS Word is much easier than on an OpenOffice Word processor. And therefore, often the argument is that rather than focussing the total cost of acquisition (TCA), it is better to focus on the total cost of operation (TCO) over the systems lifecycle.
Yet, experts have noted that even on a TCO front, certain open source systems, especially on the server side, work out to be cheaper.
How free is an open ware?
It is a known fact that for proprietary systems, the biggest cost component is the licensing. While there are some discounts for enterprise systems compared to home and consumer systems, it still turns out to be hefty.
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