“Small businesses with small budgets can save a lot of money by
deploying open-source software–at least in theory. The Linux
operating system and office productivity software such as
OpenOffice can be downloaded free. That sounds a lot better than
paying $200 (£101.49) for each system’s OS and $300-500 more
for an Office suite.“Also in theory, large companies stand to save even more because
they need so many more copies of each software program. Multiply
$500 savings per machine by 100 computers and we’re looking at
substantial cost savings: $50,000 (£25,373)…”