Open Source Weblog

I didn’t mean to suggest here that TCO should be ignored – it is a vital part of any pre-adoption/purchase analysis – but what I was suggesting is that there are potential benefits to open source that TCO just does not take into account.

With that in mind, Entiva Group’s Alex Fletcher has interesting post today about TCO as it relates to open source software.

“A strong TCO analysis should take into consideration the unique characteristics of open source while steering clear of flawed generalizations about its nature,” he writes before listing the key arguments in favor of open source software and cost drivers in a TCO analysis, as well as a list of typical comparison matrix cost variables.

As Alex writes, it’s best to steer clear of generalizations, and I’d recommend reading his post in its entirety, but for interest’s sake, here’s his list of arguments in favor of open source software:

- Increased flexibility
- Ease of integration
- Better growth management
- Support of open standards

For more on the total innovation opportunity of open source see also:
The innovation opportunity of open source
Putting a value on the total innovation opportunity of open source
Balancing open source risk and the total innovation opportunity
EnterpriseDB – the open source total innovation opportunity in action
Unisys aims to ride the wave of open source TIO
TCO versus TIO: a simple diagram
Ingres’s Roger Burkhardt on the innovation opportunity of open source