| How Does Open Source Compare to the Proprietary Competitor? | ||||||||||||||||
| Metric/Technology | Server Operating Systems | Business Desktop Operating System | Home Operating Systems | RDBMS | Web Servers | Application Servers | Content Management Systems | Source Control Systems, SCM | Development IDEs | Legacy Integration, Middleware, EAI | Distributed Component Managers | Programming Language Frameworks | Office Applications | Web Browser | Any Random Need | |
| Price Tag | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | = | + | |
| Market Share | + | - | - | - | + | + | - | + | + | - | = | + | - | - | = | |
| Innovation | + | + | + | + | + | + | = | = | + | = | = | + | = | + | + | |
| Free Puppy or Free Lunch? | + | + | = | = | + | = | = | + | + | = | = | + | = | + | + | |
| Support | = | + | + | - | + | = | - | + | + | ? | ? | + | - | = | - | |
| Service | = | = | = | - | - | - | - | - | = | ? | ? | = | - | = | - | |
| Legal Issues | = | = | = | = | + | = | = | = | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | |
| Mission Critical | = | = | = | - | + | = | - | + | = | - | - | + | = | = | = | |
| Usable by End Users | - | = | - | = | + | = | = | + | + | - | - | - | = | = | - | |
| Development community | + | + | + | = | + | = | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | |
| Licensing | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | |
| Resellable/Repackageable | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | |
| Vendor Commitment | = | - | - | - | = | - | - | = | + | - | = | = | = | = | = | |
| Fragmentation, version proliferation | = | = | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | |
| Maintainability, Customizability | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | |
| Bottom Line, Best Choice | + | = | = | = | + | + | = | + | + | = | + | + | + | + | 0 | |
| "+ : Open Source | "- : not better" | "= : about the same" | ||||||||||||||
| Notes | ||||||||||||||||
| Why FOSS/OS? | http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html | |||||||||||||||
| Vendor Commitment | Computer
Associates, IBM, Novell, even Microsoft (on a tiny scale), have released
source code for community use and development. And a number of smaller
vendors—including Chalex, Gluecode Software, JBoss, SugarCRM and MySQL—are
built on an open-source foundation. -- http://www.cio.com/archive/030105/opensource.html |
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| Free Puppy or Free Lunch? | Open Source is gaining an edge in ease of integration and ease of finding knowledgeable engineers. | |||||||||||||||
| Legal Issues | Probably Same or Fewer with Open Source | |||||||||||||||
| Usable by End Users | Usability is similar on Linux, Apple, and Windows but Windows has a larger based of trained users. | |||||||||||||||
| Usable by End Users | Open Source RDBMS systems have often better GUI tools than proprietary RDBMS's. | |||||||||||||||
| Licensing | Open Source in many cases is far less of a licencing issue than proprietary. Some vendor licensing agreements are lockin and/or timebombs. | |||||||||||||||
| Fragmentation, version proliferation | Historically OpenSource platforms have had much better longevity and backwards compatibility than proprietary solutions - which often truncate support after two versions and often totally restructure products. | |||||||||||||||