From Red Hat’s Javed Tapia:
“The first advantage of open-source software is the upfront
price. A single fully-supported package costs less than any
proprietary alternatives.“Secondly, since Linux is under a general public licensing
model, it can be installed on many computers without any
restrictions.“Thirdly, a typical Linux CD contains not only the operating
system, but also a large variety of other software products. Thus,
without buying or downloading anything else, the user has a simple
office suite, all the software needed for Internet access, advanced
networking capabilities and so on…”
From Microsoft’s Shailendra Kumar:
“As pioneers in the e-governance space in India, we have been
working with the various departments of the central and state
governments and public sector organisations for the last 13 years.
We recommend that every government department must weigh five basic
considerations when evaluating software, which are:“Total cost of ownership (TCO): The common perception is that an
operating system that is free will also cost less to maintain and
operate. However, for most open-source software additional costs
cover training, services and support. This implies that in the
final analysis, the summary of acquisition costs, application
server software, management add-ons, deployment time and support
costs in total exceed that of any commercial solution…”