BANGALORE, INDIA: Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS) (also abbreviated as FLOSS or FOSS) 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).

The goal of this paper is to convince you to consider using OSS/FS when you’re looking for software, using quantitive measures. Some sites provide a few anecdotes on why you should use OSS/FS, but for many that’s not enough information to justify using OSS/FS. Instead, this paper emphasizes quantitative measures to justify why using OSS/FS products is in many circumstances a reasonable or even superior approach.

Vendors of proprietary products often work hard to find numbers to support their claims; this page provides a useful antidote of hard figures to aid in comparing proprietary products to OSS/FS. Others have come to the same conclusions, for example, Forrester Research concluded in September 2006 that “Firms should consider open source options for mission-critical applications”.

The 2004 report of the California Performance Review, a report from the state of California, urges that “the state should more extensively consider use of open source software”, and specifically references this paper.

A review at the Canadian Open Source Education and Research site stated “This is an excellent look at the some of the reasons why any organisation should consider the use of [OSS/FS]... [it] does a wonderful job of bringing the facts and figures of real usage comparisons and how the figures are arrived at. No FUD or paid for industry reports here, just the facts”. This paper been referenced by many other works, too.

The following subsections describe the paper’s scope, challenges in creating it, the paper’s terminology, and the bigger picture. This is followed by a description of the rest of the paper’s organization (listing the sections such as market share, reliability, performance, scalability, security, and total cost of ownership).

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