“With the many business and government organizations that now
use open source software such as Linux, it’s becoming increasingly
clear that price is not the only advantage such software holds. If
it were, companies that adopted it during the Great Recession would
surely have switched back to the expensive proprietary stuff as
soon as conditions began to ease, and that’s clearly not the
case.“Rather, free and open source software (FOSS) holds numerous
other compelling advantages for businesses, some of them even more
valuable than the software’s low price. Need a few examples? Let’s
start counting.“1. Security
“It’s hard to think of a better testament to the superior
security of open source software than the recent discovery by
Coverity of a number of defects in the Android kernel. What’s so
encouraging about this discovery, as I noted the other day, is that
the only reason it was possible is that the kernel code is open to
public view.”