Open Source vs. Proprietary – Free’s Not Free

“Security & TCO

“All things being equal – that is, if both the open source
and proprietary applications do what you need them to do –
choosing between the two comes down to security and total cost of
ownership (TCO).

“Proponents of open source claim their approach produces more
secure and less buggy software. Their viewpoint has validity. The
fact that the source code (the underlying program) is available to
everyone means there are more eyeballs to review the code and
improve the code. While the argument might be that it also opens it
to hackers, hackers are less motivated knowing there’s a wide
community ready and able to fix flaws. On the other hand,
proprietary software attracts hacking because it’s closed –
it’s more of a challenge. Once a breach is found and exploited,
only a relatively small number of developers have access to the
program to fix the security hole, once of course the company agrees
that such a breach exists.”

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