[OFBiz] Users - full life cycle costs of open source software
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[OFBiz] Users - full life cycle costs of open source software
 
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Perhaps an interesting article: People forget to consider the full life cycle costs of software, including open source. "The pitfall is that people say, 'We can save money because we're not paying licensing fees,'" said Drew Ladner, general manager of the government group at JBoss. "But the reality is you have to look at the whole life cycle." http://www.linuxinsider.com/rsstory/46288.html -- Regards, Hans Bakker ANT Websystems Co.,Ltd (http://www.antwebsystems.com) _______________________________________________ Users mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/users |
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Re: [OFBiz] Users - full life cycle costs of open source software
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Hans, Thanks, that is an interesting article. It would be nice if they opined a little more strongly that it is still overall significantly cheaper, though that was certainly implied. Of course, I guess with the right management an open source based project can end up far more expensive than a similar commercial software based project... ;) I can second this opinion in my experiences with OFBiz, as I'm sure many on this list can as well. It is easy to forget that customization and maintenance costs and such can be really significant when you are deploying something that consists of half a million lines of text in its raw form. That does mean it has to be expensive, there are people running OFBiz without putting much money into it at all on an ongoing basis. However, if you want to take advantage of the flexibility, it costs money. It costs a lot less than what it might with most commercial solutions, but a lot more than 0, which I think is what this article communicates well. It's an easy mentality to understand really. It is natural to dream about all of the neat things you want to do in life or that you might be able to do to increase profits or market share of your business. It is also easy to forget or simply not understand the costs of doing such things. Those that come from a big business world usually find OFBiz an excellent option: it's quite capable for a lot less money and give them the flexibility to jump from one corporate goal to another and actually get each implemented before the next comes along. For small companies, or even in some cases small divisions of large companies, they see what they can do with OFBiz and start drawing up plans that they can't even afford to staff, even if they can afford to implement the technology behind it. Always makes for very interesting conversations with prospective clients... and it is amazingly difficult to help people get an accurate picture of the reality they are getting into, complicated by the fact that sometimes they just plain don't believe you (usually goes along with sticker shock because 1 day of work for an engineer or consulting is a LOT more than the cost of QuickBooks Pro, which is what they were hoping for...). -David On Sep 24, 2005, at 5:09 PM, Hans Bakker wrote: > > Perhaps an interesting article: > > People forget to consider the full life cycle costs of software, > including > open source. "The pitfall is that people say, 'We can save money > because > we're not paying licensing fees,'" said Drew Ladner, general > manager of the > government group at JBoss. "But the reality is you have to look at > the whole > life cycle." > > http://www.linuxinsider.com/rsstory/46288.html > > > -- > Regards, > Hans Bakker > ANT Websystems Co.,Ltd (http://www.antwebsystems.com) > > _______________________________________________ > Users mailing list > [hidden email] > http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/users _______________________________________________ Users mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/users |
Re: [OFBiz] Users - full life cycle costs of open source software
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