Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS)? Look at the Numbers! David A. Wheeler
[email protected] Revised as of September 8, 2003 This paper provides quantitative data that, in many cases, using open source software / free software is a reasonable or even superior approach to using their proprietary competition according to various measures. This paper’s goal is to show that you should consider using OSS/FS when acquiring software. This paper examines market share, reliability, performance, scalability, security, and total cost of ownership. It also has sections on non-quantitative issues, unnecessary fears, OSS/FS on the desktop, usage reports, other sites providing related information, and ends with some conclusions. An appendix gives more background information about OSS/FS. You can view this paper at http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html (HTML format). Palm PDA users can view it in Plucker format (you will also need Plucker to read it). A short briefing based on this paper is also available in PDF and Open Office Impress formats (for the latter, use Open Office Impress). Old archived copies and a list of changes are also available. 1. Introduction Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS) has risen to great prominence. Briefly, OSS/FS programs are programs whose licenses give users the freedom to run the program for any purpose, to study and modify the program, and to redistribute copies of either the original or modified program (without having to pay royalties to previous developers). This goal of this paper is to show that you should consider using OSS/FS when you’re looking for software, based on quantitative measures.