But most companies don't know about those options. Open source has a stigma when it comes to the average small business, they look at and assume it developed by a bunch of 13 year old kids in their parent's basement, if they even know what it is at all.
Large companies want to buy something from a group that can be held accountable. Look at the netcraft web server survey, while most sites run off of apache, most secure sites (SSL) run off of IIS, most people aren't going to mess with open source from a corporate standpoint. They want to buy a product, install it, and get support from the company they buy it from. The LMS is a great example, the license for blackboard isn't that much, it is the support agreement and things involved in that that you pay for, the escalation and the ability to talk to a software developer, and in our case influence change on the way the product is designed. We don't have time to deal with writing code in an open source project to get it to do something we want, only for it to break the next time there is an update. Sure with open source anybody can be a vendor, but it another part of the problem, as a small business owner how do you choose who to go with for you questions? Firefox is a better product than IE, but it still doesn't have the market share. Home users don't care, small business don't care, large companies don't care. They have their browser, it works, why try to deal with a second one. > -----Original Message----- > From: Denilicious [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Saturday, February 10, 2007 3:02 AM > To: CF-Community > Subject: Re: Why Linux is more secure than Windows > > On 2/9/07, Nick McClure <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Larger companies that have IT people can do that, small companies that > don't > > rely on the support provided by the vendor. Because they don't have to > go > > out and find somebody else to support a product. > > I was talking about using a "vendor", actually. But no matter what, > you're > talking about going to "someone else". Be it brand name or no. Right? > > .... > > You call the number on the box, or the website and somebody tells you to > do > > this, that is what MOST people want. > > The point is, you can do this with Open Source solutions as well. > > And Moodle is an excellent example: all you need is PHP and MySQL > experience. You don't have to pay Moodle for the name, so to speak. > ALL your money can go directly toward services rendered. > There are like hundreds of support options for Moodle hosting. > > And anyone can be a vendor, it's pretty entrepreneurish, actually. > > Six of one, half a dozen of another. I'm just saying, Open Source is > awesome, and being able to "have your way" with the source is just fab. > > Boils down to, either you do it, or someone else does it-- either way. > With Open Source, that "someone else" can be anyone. Not so with > closed, by definition. > > Sure it's a trivial thing if you don't do anything involving source, but > it's HUGE when you do. It's a valid, powerful part of the OS idea. > Isn't it the main idea, actually? It's just so weird to have people > try to downplay it, is all. =] > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Upgrade to Adobe ColdFusion MX7 Experience Flex 2 & MX7 integration & create powerful cross-platform RIAs http:http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;56760587;14748456;a?http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/flex2/?sdid=LVNU Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/message.cfm/messageid:227669 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.5
