Why is OSS Commercial Software So Expensive?

An anonymous reader asks: "Our startup honestly wanted to use OSS products. We do not want to spend time for any OSS bug fixing so our main requirement was -official support for all OSS products-. We thought were prepared to pay the price for OSS products, but then we got a price sticker shock. Now behold: QT is $3300 per seat. We have dropped the development and rewrote everything to C# (MSVS 2005 is ~$700). Embedded Linux from a reputable RT vendor is $25,000 per 5 seats per year. We needed only 3 seats. We had to buy 5 nevertheless. The support was bad. We will go for VxWorks or WinCE in our next product. Red Hat Linux WS is $299. An OEM version of Windows XP Pro is ~$140. A Cygwin commercial license will cost tens of thousands of dollars and is only available for large shops. We need 5 seats. Windows Unix services are free. After all, we have decided that the survival of our business is more important for us then 'do-good' ideas. Except for that embedded Linux (slated for WinCE or VxWorks substitution), we are not OSS shop anymore." Why are commercial ports of OSS software so expensive, and what would need to happen before they could be competitive in the future?

Profit!

[riversky]

Hire people to make the software (even open source) = Wages to pay

Hire people to make the software but not pay them = slavery

Charge more for the product than the wages you pay = PROFIT

Ok that was way too simple but the bottom line is no one ever said OSS was non-profit or even small profit. In fact by driving down costs these providers can get richer than with proprietary software. The model is buy low and sell high. Economics 101

Support

[radish]

But you say you want support, that's why you're paying. Hate to break it to you, but an OEM license of XP doesn't buy you any useful support. Neither does a $700 VS license. Microsoft, like everyone else, charges for support contracts.

It's the support costs.

[SarekOfVulcan]

How much support do you get from Red Hat [redhat.com] for your $299?

How much from Microsoft [microsoft.com] for your $140?

Win XP Pro OEm - support?

[ahg]

Red Hat Linux WS is $299. An OEM version of Windows XP Pro is ~$140.

And the OEM version of Windows XP Pro is supported by whom?

I don't know what support Red Hat provides with the $299 version but I know supposrt is primarily what you're paying for or everyone would be using Fedora Core.. Please compare apples to apples - last I heard OEM versions including zero vendor support.

Um... You're *not* paying for the software.

[Colin Smith]

Pretty clearly. That bit's available for free.

You're paying for official support and services. Presumably 24/7 telephone, onsite if necessary. You're paying for people and their expertise not software.

However, there is a good point. Support is expensive, there's a market out there for lower cost support services.

 

Re:Win XP Pro OEm - support?

[Anonymous Coward]

In that case, Dell is charging you for support. It doesn't matter that it is included in the cost of the machine, Dell isn't giving you that for free. So your comparison is still wack.

Re:Why pay anything

[Wavicle]

Why would you want the $10,000 version of Cygwin when you can download and use it for free?

Because they don't want to release their software as GPL, and the free version of cygwin requires it.

If you want a commercial Linux, why not look at Redhat?

Because they want a real-time embeddable OS and that's not what RH is selling.

Re:Support

[QuantumG]

Alternatively, you could just write the UI for your application in the appropriate language for each of the platforms you want to support. Yes, that means writing one in C# for Windows, one in Objective-C for Mac and one in C for Linux. Then use a common core for all platforms. The UI should be seperate from the core anyway, so its not like it is hard to write three seperate UIs. It does, however, mean you can make the app look different on each platform, something that people who use cross platform toolkits claim they don't want, until they actually start getting customer complaints from users who want your app to look and feel like every other app on their platform. Of course, these are usually Mac users, and we tend to just ignore them, so the myth of cross platform UIs continues.

The answer is in the question...

[Noryungi]

To wit:

We do not want to spend time for any OSS bug fixing so our main requirement was -official support for all OSS products-

Simple solutions:

1. Make sure your programmers know OSS (Linux or otherwise) inside and out.
2. Do not buy that support, since your programmers already know how to support themselves, fix bugs and/or know enough to select stable versions of OSS tools, instead of relying on the latest-and-greatest (and buggy) tools from a vendor.

The same thing happened to me in my last job, a mixed Sun/Linux shop: people complaining about the price of Linux. Why? Because (a) only SuSE Linux was approved for a certain tool, and that tool was considered as critical by the company and (b) because company's policies and bean counters demanded official support from a reputable vendor for everything that was bought. The result? Thousands of Euros spent on buying expensive, gold-plated, 24/7 support contracts. That were almost never used, since both the programming and sysadmin teams had plenty of experience using Linux servers.

Which makes perfect sense really: Sun support is sometimes cheaper than some Linux vendors, because Sun understands that software support also means hardware lock-in. Microsoft can be cheaper than Linux because, let's face it, all the OEM Windows installed on brand-new computers subsidize the dev tools (C# and Visual what-have-you) while support is essential to the survival of many Linux distributions. Heck, giving the software away for free and selling support contracts is the entire business plan of many Linux distributors! Also, Microsoft understands that, if you, as a developer, buy Visual Thingamajig 2006, you are locked into their platforms, and so are your clients. And that means more money, in the long run, for Microsoft. Why do you think they have recently started to offer programming tools for free? Not out of the goodness of their hearts, that's for sure.

So, Linux, cheaper? Only if you solid in-house experience. I have also seen companies replacing hundreds of Sun and Windows 2000 R&D workstations by Linux/AMD machines. Why? The official reason was: "Linux is cheaper and good enough to provide the 90% functionalities we need, AMD is cheaper AND more powerful than SPARC CPUs, and everyone here likes (and knows) UNIX systems better anyway"... And that was the VP of R&D speaking.

So, back to the point above: Linux is cheaper... as long as you have enough experience in-house not to need expensive support contracts.

Apples vs Oranges

[swillden]

I think a big part of the problem is that you're comparing different things and wondering why they have different prices.

Qt vs C#: Sure, C# is cheaper, but the price you quoted for Qt is for triple-platform licenses, and C# doesn't get you that much cross-platform support. Yes, Mono gives you support for other platforms, but it differs in many respects from the Windows version, whereas Qt is very consistent across all of them. Documentation and support for Qt is vastly better than the comparable C# support for non-Windows environments, (and somewhat better than for Windows as well).

Red Hat vs XP: Red Hat contains far more functionality than XP. Depending on exactly what you're doing, you very likely have to buy additional software for XP. Also, how much support does that $140 XP license get you? Assistance with installation, and that's about it. Red Hat provides a lot more, and it costs a lot more. If you don't think you'll need the extra support, then don't buy it, and Red Hat will be a lot cheaper than XP.

RT Linux vs WinCE/VxWorks: I can't argue here, not at the prices you quoted, and since you said you got lousy support from the Linux vendor (who was it, BTW?). Perhaps you just needed a different vendor? How about Wind River (makers of VxWorks, for those who don't know).

Cygwin vs Windows Services for Unix: Depending on what you need, SFU may be fine. As long as you're just using the stuff provided by Microsoft, SFU is pretty good. If you want to be able to download any random Linux/Unix package off the net and have good odds that it will build and run, though, forget it, SFU is completely inadequate while Cygwin will do a good job. Note also that SFU comes with no support, unlike that commercial Cygwin.

In nearly all cases, I think the core issue is that the prices quoted for OSS support (a) buy you better support than what you'll get in the closed-source case, (b) give you more in functionality, flexibility, or both and (c) are really intended for bigger companies who are less strapped for cash and who have a bigger need of the security blanket the support contracts provide.

Your company would probably have been better off skipping the support contracts, using the software for no cost, and putting the cash aside to pay an independent consultant or two in case you get in a jam. You can get extremely high-quality support for most OSS for small consulting fees, just by hopping onto the project mailing list, identifying a handful of heavy contributors who know the area you're concerned with, and then privately offering them money for their time.

Of course, if your management is too uptight to take that approach, and too tight to buy the OSS support, you should go with the closed-source offerings -- and then keep your fingers crossed that you don't have to rely on Microsoft's support. Wind River's support is good, in my experience, but the rest of the stuff you mentioned is from Microsoft.

$3500 doesn't seem that bad.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it that expensive? Sure for the home office, $5000 is kind of pricey. If you make $100k a year, it's 5% before taxes so it's probably 7 to 8% of what you make. For a business it can be different. In the early to mid 1990s the big part of the industry was totally focused on TCO. I remember seeing numbers between $12000 and $25000 a year to own a PC in an enterprise. It seemed really boggling, I mean a big computer was like $5000, say you buy everything retail, so for some good compilers and stuff maybe that is around $5000 so $10,000 total which is less that $12000 a year and you don't [buy a new one every year.

If you start to factor networking in and then the back office applications and what have you. I think Tivoli at its cheapest is like $35 an IP address. Various switches and other network devices are doing per port and per IP licensing for various functions. Throw some IT flunkies in to the mix a network guy or two and the cost of owning and operating a PC per year starts to climb. To be honest, now a days, I wouldn't be that shocked if the TCO had gone up some.

So then when you factor in a $3500 a seat license for something, I think it can start to look kind of cheap, especially if it's a one time fee or a one major version fee (presumbaly upgrades are cheaper) and it's royalty free. How much are you selling your product for and how many people will actually be working on the GUI? Say 2 developers and a spare copy (for the build machine or something) $10500.00 for a pretty killer piece of software like QT? That doesn't seem horrible. What MSDN cost per year? That's supposed to be per seat.

Doesn't quite ring true

[SSpade]

Qt comes in a range of versions. They're mostly freely available for open source products. For closed source products, the most sophisticated single-platform version, incuding a years worth of support, is $1100 / seat for small business and startups for up to 3 seats. The original poster wanted 3 seats.

The only reason he'd have to pay $3300 / seat would be if he had more than $200,000 cash on hand. Not as available credit, but cash in the bank. Or if he was already bringing in more than $200,000 a year in revenue.

I don't have much sympathy for well-funded startups that decide to choose bad technology rather than good technology because it's a grand or two cheaper. I expect this one will burn through its VC and crash and burn fairly quickly.

Re:Qt

[DrDitto]

Qt does not cost $3300 per seat. You can download it and use it for Free. Oh wait, you meant "proprietary licensing". Right.

Microsoft Visual Studio costs $700. Doesn't matter if you open-source your code or if your license is "proprietary".

Re:Not a Good Business Model for Enterprise

[djcinsb]

The $140 (for XP Pro) is the cost of the OS without other software. Red Hat comes with a compiler suite and a lot of other useful items, so the direct comparison of the costs of the packages is not really a valid measure.

Re:Support

[swillden]

The only way that they can charge more for the "commercial" version AND enforce their right to limit how you use the software is for them to build a completely proprietary project that runs on Linux, then they can license their complete, compiled (with or without source), and wholy owned product however they chose, but if they choose to license under the GPL then they cannot impose the use restrictions.

Nonsense.

Qt is licensed under two licenses: The GPL and Trolltech's commercial development license.

If you use the GPL version, which you acquire from wherever you like, then your application must also be licensed under the GPL, or you have no legal right to distributed it. Technically, you had no legal right to create it, except by accepting the terms of the GPL, because your application is a derived work and creation of derived works is reserved to the copyright holder.

If you buy the commercial license, you can sell your software as closed source, and you can redistribute the run-time files that Trolltech provides you, or that you build from the copy of the code that Trolltech provides you.

Code which was originally written under the GPL is not eligible for integration into a work under the commercial license. Not because Trolltech is adding requirements to the GPL, but because Trolltech's commercial license excludes such software from being linked to and distributed with their commercial version of Qt. You can't do it under the commercial license, and you obviously can't do it under the GPL.

There's no weird copyright theory here, just a couple of different licenses.

In practice, of course, lots of people start commercial Qt projects prior to purchasing development licenses. I've never heard of Trolltech making any attempt at all to curb this, beyond simply saying that it's not permitted.

Re:Apples vs Oranges

[Cylix]

Regarding the RedHat support...

Just to site an example (one I've said many times before).

A friend of mine was in a similar boat. Needed support contracts across the board for major software and licenses across the board for everything else. (ie, Winzip, office, etc).

Anyhow, so he picks up RedHat support and day one actually needs it.

Fairly quickly, the issue is resolved and they e-mail him a new binary and source for lilo to get his system to boot. (Newer chipset at the time). Later, the patch would be added back in and his update was included as a fix for an issue.

On the flip side, I did once have an issue with a IIS server and Compaq's Microsoft support division did a great job helping me through that. However, that was under a per incident cost, but it was good none the less.

In any event, I'm sure my friend has had some more stories to tell, but I always liked that one.

Me, support contracts would be nice on occassion, but generally I hammer the issue out all by myself.

Re:Why pay anything

[CodeBuster]

Because they don't want to release their software as GPL, and the free version of cygwin requires it.

Then they cannot use the GPL for the free version either, otherwise you could could just download the free version and use it commercially anyway and that would be perfectly legal under the GPL. This is why SleepyCat uses their own OSI and FSF approved license for BerkeleyDB, so that they can legally distinguish between the free version and the pay version while still maintainting control over end use and some features of other OSS licenses such as GPL. I think that sometimes managers want to use GPL because they have heard about it being an "open source" license and trendy, but they don't understand that the GPL has some potential gotchas in the actual language, such as the inability to place limitations on use of the software once it is distributed and the requirement that the source code be distributed for free or minimal charge to cover the cost of shipping and CDs or paper and ink only, that might torpedo their business plans if they are not based upon support. So yeah, you can charge $1 million dollars for the software but who would pay that when they can get your code on CDs for $2 and compile it themselves and use it however they want without restriction, including redistributing their compiled version for free and undercutting your prices?

Support Contract vs Software License

[Ephemeriis]

You toss out a lot of prices in your post, but you don't really indicate what the price is for.

One example you use is a comparison of RedHat Workstation for $299 versus Windows XP Professional for $140. That RedHat Workstation you're buying comes with a fairly nice support contract... According to the website [redhat.com] you get unlimited incidents and a 4 hour response time. That Windows price is just the license to use their software, no implied support contract at all...and Microsoft charges $245 per incident if you don't have a support contract...

A more accurate comparison of prices might be Fedora Core for $0 (just the license to use the software, no implied support contract) versus $140 for Windows XP Professional. Or Redhat Workstation for $299 (with unlimited support) versus $8,299 [microsoft.com] for "up to 10 hours of proactive support assistance" from Microsoft.

Software is cheap, support is expensive - and with OSS products you are generally buying support, since the software is usually available for free.

Re:Some Theories...

[swillden]

If he did submit a bug and has an open case with Microsoft for it, it is free. Bugs, hotfixes and licensing cases are (and always have been) free.

Admittedly it's been a few years since I dealt much with MS software, but back around 2000 or so, I found some bugs in VC++ and it cost us $199 per incident to report them. I guess they called it "support" because an MS engineer looked at the problem for a while before deciding it was a bug, but it still seemed like paying money to report bugs to me.

Re:Not a Good Business Model for Enterprise

[nine-times]

Lots of people pay for software without specifically wanting support. First, you have consumers who don't really know how to pirate or get around activation schemes. Also, there are businesses for whom the cost of a license is cheaper than a visit from the BSA. Gosh, there are even people for whom paying for the software they use is a moral issue.

Redhat, on the other hand, has given moral and legal permission to use their software for free. I myself have purchased copies of Windows and Photoshop, but downloaded Linux and GIMP without paying anything. Maybe I'll donate some money to the projects one of these days, but I don't anticipate paying for Redhat anytime soon. However, everything else being equal, if there were no FOSS Linux distros available, would I be willing to buy a copy of Redhat? Probably.

VxWorks???

[AaronW]

Having dealt with both VxWorks and a commercial embedded Linux I would recommend against VxWorks. My experience with their support is it's almost non-existant and it's missing a ton of functionality and has had a lot of bugs.

For our new project we are using buildroot, which is free. It will automatically download all the various tools and libraries, build the cross compiler and everything else.

If you need help setting this up, I suggest contacting one of the many consultants available to get you up and running. Once you're up and running, just go with a consultant when you're stuck. Our experience with a commercial embedded Linux vendor has been pretty bad with respect to support and I've heard similar complaints about other vendors as well.

Re:Not a Good Business Model for Enterprise

[TheRaven64]

The depends on excellent documentation which isn't enforced in the open source community.

That depends on the project. In OpenBSD, for example, you are not allowed to commit any code without also committing a corresponding update to the documentation (and your code must be commented according to the OpenBSD KNF guidelines; see man style for more information). Other projects have less strict commit rules.

Re:Commercial versions vs. "based on"

[Pharmboy]

Inventory management, purchase order, customer record keeping, invoicing, for a company that needs more than 5 seats, but less than 50. Very few users accessing, but ungodly amount of records added daily. 30k+ P.O.s per year alone. (We have very efficient employees) Most software available on FOSS is for individuals, or large corps are writting their own, or you go SAP, etc. and end up paying $100k for a complete solution when you only have 15 people accessing the data. AND it wouldn't do what my current software does, so I would have to pay a programmer to modify stuff.

Or I can buy cheap Dell computers and about $1000 to $3000 worth of Sage/Peachtree products which suck but get the job done. I even have to pay more for Dell's without Windows. It was a most frustrating time, and no matter how much I wanted to migrate completely over to FOSS, it is pointless if it costs more and does less.

We still use Linux on all servers, and when the market has products that are cost effective and work for us, we will migrate, but it doesn't look like it will happen soon. I have talked to several people at companies that make software we DO like, and they say they will never port over to Linux. Ever.

Re:Not a Good Business Model for Enterprise

[skiflyer]

I don't really buy that argument, though... lots of people download closed source software without paying. The ones that need support, or want to support the company for whatever reason, are the ones that pay. At this point, OSS just doesn't have the user base it needs to make cheaper prices profitable, but that's not because of people who download it for free. It's because the ones who need support for it aren't very plentiful at the moment.

Not the kind of stuff this guy is talking about though. Personally I think the problem is he's comparing apples to oranges... I don't have numbers, and I'm not going to go get them, but let me point out a few of the obvious flaws in the summary IMO.

• RHE to WinXP OEM: Uh, no... Ubuntu to WinXP OEM, RHE to Win2k3 Server
• QT to MSVS2005: Why not go GTK+ vs. C# Express, both free
• Embedded Linux ... that's about volume, if you're embedding linux you should be saving a small fortune per appliance vs. putting WinCE on each of them, but yeah, the development aint cheap.
• Cygwin commercial vs. Windows Unix tools, I think you're mis-understanding what each of those can do.

Right tool for the job, sometimes it's OSS, sometimes it's not... but the above post is like me complaining about the cost of steel vs. plastic because a caterpillar bulldozer is pricier than my nephew's sand bucket.

Re:Qt

[TheRaven64]

Visual Studio is an IDE, while Qt is a set of libraries. MFC/Win32/.NET are the libraries you would use with MSVS and they are free (with every copy of Windows, or LGPL'd with WINE/WineLib/Mono). Eclipse is an IDE you can use with Qt and it is free.

Re:Not a Good Business Model for Enterprise

[CCFreak2K]

RHE to WinXP OEM: Uh, no... Ubuntu to WinXP OEM, RHE to Win2k3 Server

From what I read, he wanted Red Hat Workstation which, IIRC, a boxed copy is $140 versus Windows XP Professional, which is retailed normally at $200 (although it can be gotten cheaper at some places).

Better off to hire

[dravine]

Adding up all the licensing costs, it seems to me that you could have hired some one with sufficient OSS experience to manage the applications and servers for you for far less than your 'per seat' costs would have been. There is a great deal of community support, which is often far better than the support you pay for from commercial vendors. Aside from that, your company would be creating a job for someone who may not have one otherwise.

Re:He required support

[killjoe]

So is it your point that no human being can ever buy support for any other open source toolkit other then QT?

He says that QT costs too much so we goes to VS for around 700 dollars. Does that 700 dollars include support? No it does not. He just threw that out because he is a troll. He is comparing the cost of QT + support to VS without support and picking a solution that only works on windows. C# + GTK is available for free from mono which he also completely ignores.

The guy decides to drop QT because it costs more and moves to C# without once considering java with swing or swt or anything else? He never considers Mono and goes directly to paying for VS while not buying support from MS.

The guy is either an idiot, shill, astro turfer or a troll.

Re:Not a Good Business Model for Enterprise

[Antique Geekmeister]

This original poster is probably trying to build a user interface for a portable device where they don't want to publish their source code. That means they need to use libraries that are not under GPL. Ergo, they need Qt or a similar license, and that's why the Qt license costs so much rather than using open source and publishing open source.

This person wants to reap the benefits of open source development, without opening their own code up for similar development. This kind of thing is *exactly* why the GPL exists: to keep closed source developers like this from harvesting the cream of open source and then locking it up for their private products.

wrong assumptions - wrong questions

[grindcorefan]

Lets start by dealing with each example one-by-one:

Qt: To buy a "commercial" license for Qt gives you the right to use qt in non-free software. If you don't buy a "commercial" license, you can still use Qt but you'll have to comply to the GPL. This has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO with the question of getting support or not. As long as the GPL is ok for your business model, you can go to other companies than Trolltech in order to get a support contract for Qt, that's how Free Software works. Secondly, the "commercial" Qt license does give you more than simply the right to use the Qt libraries and entitlement to support, it also gives you the complete source code and the right to modify it as you see fit! MSVS won't give you that for any money in the world. Additionally, the renewal fees at Trolltech's webpage suggest that the yearly support comes at a price tag of about $1000 per seat, which is much closer to the price tag you've listed for MSVS.

Embedded Linux: I can't comment on that as you do not give enough data. However, my impression is that quite a number of Embedded Linux vendors violate the GPL anyway and that the pricing's dodgy. On the other hand, $250000 is a cheap price tag for a non-free OS license that gives you the right to integrate it into some piece of hardware and re-sell that piece of hardware as many times as you want. I doubt vxworks or WinCE will give you that, either. Again, the license will give you access to the complete source code, something windriver or ms won't give you unless you pay much more money.

RedHat: You've never heard of things like CentOS, Piebox Enterprise Linux etc. before, do you? Again, you're making the wrong assumption that one particular vendore has a monopoly on support. Get it, with Free Software and freely available source code, this is simply not the case. You can always go to another company in order to get support for a certain Free Software product. Again, ms won't give you no support and no source code for 140 bucks.

cygwin: I don't know what you want to use cygwin for, but I don't know why you'd need a "commercial" license again, either. You can get support for Free Software without paying for a "commercial" license (see above). Do you want to develop non-free software with cygwin? That'll be difficult, mate. cygwin itself is just a wee library, the biggest part of the software available in the cygwin package are GNU tools. These are not available for dual-licensing anyway, using them in non-free software would violate the GPL. You'd have to re-write GNU all yourself again...

Conclusion: You are either clueless or a fudder. You compare apples with oranges and you don't seem to know what you want to do with all that Free Software. It seems your business model is based on freeloading Free Software and converting it into something non-free to make quick money with going the old-fashioned non-free software way. D'oh, why don't you use BSD then? You don't understand how dual-licensing works. You don't realise that with Free Software, the imaginary "original vendor" doesn't have a monopoly on support. The source code is freely available, everyone can get it and maintain that piece of software for you, even you.

Not a realisitic comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

The comparison where windows OEM is listed as that price you do not get the office suite, unrestricted database software, ability to create adobe pdf files for free just to list a few If you look at the cost of a true desktop in a Microsoft corporate environment without the mass volume license its more like this :
Windows XP Professional OEM : $140
Adobe Distiller : $199 (Direct from Adobe)
Office Professional : $399 (from Amazon)
MSDN subscription : Anything upto around $10k/year

All up that seems more expensive for a true development environment using a Microsoft platform.

Re:He required support

[T.E.D.]

Does that 700 dollars include support? No it does not.

Actually, yes it does: [microsoft.com]

This should be modded as +5 Funny, as I get a "page not available" screen when I click on the link.

        Depending on product and how it is purchased, you may be eligible for two support incidents at no-charge. These incidents apply to Full Packaged Products only and broadly speaking the following groups of products are covered - consumer products, desktop applications, desktop operating systems and developer tools.

This is nothing like the support one tyically expects with a commercial support contract. 3K per seat per year is a typical price in the industry. Our RTOS licenses are in this ballpark, as are our commercial (non-Microsoft) compiler support contracts. If that is what support prices really are for OSS, there is nothing unusual about them.

One of the things that periodicly paying a large amount of money buys you is leverage with someone who can fix your problems. If they are tardy or non-responsive, you can shut off the gravy spigot. The thought of getting Microsoft to do that, even if you were paying them 3K a year, is laughable. They are so big and rich, nothing short of government action can budge them.

Perhaps a better topic would have been "Why are Microsoft's support options so odd?"

Re:Not a Good Business Model for Enterprise

[Phisbut]

In many ways, it is shameful to know that the OSS community helped those guys to develop a product but in return they offer a licensing model which suits only "Big Players"

Actually, *they* developed the product on their own, and then decided to open-source it. They have every right in the world to do that.

I got pretty frustrated that me, and a couple of friends, cant use QT to develop commercial software. For the 4 of us we would have to spend some 12.000 Euros. with a monthly avg salary of 400 Euros per month (my country), we just cant afford to start a business based on QT.

The "full" version of Qt is $3300, which is about 2600 EUR each, with 4 developers, it's 10400 EUR. If you're planning on starting a business doing commercial software, with 4 employees, and you can't expect to recoup the initial costs of 10000 EUR, then your business plan is seriously fucked up and you really should reconsider. 4 salaries would cost you more than double that.

Re:Not a Good Business Model for Enterprise

[mabhatter654]

excellent example of this... the OS version RH WS versus Window XP. He claims RH WS expensive at $299 while windows is $140 OEM. Read that again. RH is offically supported for so many instance calls per year/term etc.. and if you find a bug they will write it down and may actually fix it... just for you! For 5 seats that's a steal. Compare to MS windows, for starters that $140 price does not entitle you to call Microsoft for any problem! There is NO support for OEM, you must call who you bought it from. The "supported" version is $299 as well... but that still doesn't entitle you to call for support... you have to pay per call for that as well. For 5 seats of windows you're not even a bug on the windscreen.

As far as the other products he mentioned, they are buying commercial licenses without the usual "GPL only" restrictions as well as support. These are companies that will actually ANSWER your calls and fix problems you find, not just take your money and point you to a website. Remember, MS Visual studio, C#, CE tools may be cheap for price, but come with NO SUPPORT!!! NONE! if you want to actually call somebody, you have to pay per call/hour/service additional. The cost for most commercial products is only to legally USE them. not get help!

Perhaps this company didn't need quite so many support options, it seems a little silly to purchase the "deluxe" versions for such a small shop. But I'd give them credit for trying and helping out by paying!