Tim Almond

There’s often talk in the Open Source world, about what the term "free" means, and is often qualified in two ways - "Free as in Freedom" and/or "Free as in Beer".

On the surface, it appears that only one of these is about business, the "free as in beer".

But the freedom to modify should be considered as part of a software evaluation in terms of cost. If you can change your hardware and OS platform, and your code will still work, then you can make your investment pay off for longer. If you can deal with support with a number of vendors, then you can introduce more competition, and more flexibility. If you can change the underlying code, you are not dependent upon the wishes of a single vendor.

Software, it should be remembered, has no decay. It costs a lot of money to make.

So, changing it for no business gain is a bad deal. But this is what can be dictated to you by a closed-source solution.

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Tags: Software Development //