Section 2.7. Some Final Words

2.7. Some Final Words

While open source software is about freedom and licenses, it is nonetheless true that open source costs less, under many circumstances, than proprietary software. This is an important aspect of free software. Additionally, it has to be cost competitive against other free products, just as software that costs money must compete against an open source/free offering.

2.7.1. Free Things Are Still Cheaper Than Expensive Things

When I say "competes against other free products," I'm talking about pirated copies of Windows, Office, SQL Server, Oracle, and many others competing against Linux, OpenOffice, MySQL, Postgres, and other best-of-breed free software applications. These applications are doing very well in environments that have little regard, legally or culturally, for software licenses.

Free things have a velocity all their own, and people forget that. I'll leave you with a little anecdote from when I was working for a large law firm in Washington, DC. I was still in college studying computer science, and I ran the law firm's email network during the day. This was 1996 or so, and TCP/IP was clearly the big winner in the network format wars versus NetBIOS and SNA, to a degree that no one could have appreciated. I was in the elevator with one of the intellectual property attorneys at the firma fairly technical guywhen he said something like: "You know, if TCP/IP had been properly protected and patented, we could have rigged it so that every packet cost money; they really missed the boat on that one."

Where would the Internet be if this was true? I don't know, but I do know one thing: the Internet would not be running TCP/IP. So, enjoy the freedom of open source software. It is there for you!