They may, but then they would have to prove that open source software is either more expensive or less appropriate than their closed source alternatives. Sometimes this will be the case, sometimes it will not. What we, at OSS Watch, want to see happening is organisations choose the best solution for their needs, sometimes this will be the least expensive, sometimes the most expensive, sometimes the most polished, sometimes the most flexible etc.

A valid purchasing decision does not only consider price.

The important thing from this report is that it shows income can be generated from open source product. This should have the effect of increasing business involvement in open source development.

Of course, it would be nice to follow up this post with some hard evidence that open source also reduces cost, unfortunately, the only data I know of in this area tends to be fairly ad hoc or limited in scope and is therefore of little use in most business cases.

More seriously, isn’t there a danger that proprietary vendors could use such figures to demonstrate how expensive deployment of open source software is liekly to be?

Brian Kelly

With respect to your point, I agree. Having hard data comparing the revenue growth of closed source against the revenue growth of open source would be useful. I wonder if anyone reading here knows of any such data.

Good data, btw. I just want to see how open source has increased its hold over the years.