The real economic value of open source software

It's curious that some owner advocates soft yet soft diehard detractors opensource / free not paid rarely or software . Stole. own soft use pirated Windows, Office , Visual Studio , Windows Server , SQL Server, and that's just to start.

It is a very good pay for the software that you use , pay in fact gives it a much more real than " know" that should be paid for using it .

For example , in my particular experience opensource software I paid for about 35 to 40 times :

While still not common access to broadband Internet , there was no way to get a Linux distribution - which occupied much space as 6 CDs - that was not buying it at some sites that were inside deliveries . An alternative was to wait for the CDs of computer magazines , which took between one month and two to publish an issue with the version "new" Linux distro .

So there was no other to pay to buy the CDs multiple distributions , stole. be paid on delivery and get the CDs and install the software and see which worked well , it was said " was money well spent ."

If the version of the distro I bought did not work very well , saying " mmm , I should not have bought this version , I spent money for nothing." This notion is very important at the professional level for me today :

It made me realize that reality beyond what is paid , it takes certain software silver , there is a possibility that the software is not worth that it costs, is expensive or cheap the price.


So we come to today where usually use like Proxmox VE software , and VMware vSphere , the first is opensource, free, and the other has a license worth tens of thousands of dollars (which was paid for by the way) , to access its basic features (which are easily matched and surpassed by Proxmox VE btw). Yet I know and understand that if we had to pay for Proxmox VE, the cost probably would not be very far from what you paid for vSphere . And the quality of the software and its features are very similar.

This I understand is to know , know, the real value of the software , which is very easy to forget to hack commercial soft and soft download "free" , without thinking much about the licenses for both.

If they are staunch supporters of the owner and especially soft , soft diehard detractors opensource / free , should try the experience of pay for the software they use every day own and see for yourselves if you really worth paying so many dollars by using :

Pay a license of Office, Visual Studio, SQL Server, and live the experience of saying " well the money spent " or - depending on the version - " mmm , should not have bought it , not worth the money "