Why Free/Open Source Software?
The purpose of this section is to highlight some of benefits institutions are bound to enjoy if they choose to adopt using Free/Open Source Software. This section compares FOSS to proprietary software quantitatively and qualitatively. It is important to note that majority of the comparison statistics and information in this section has been adapted from an e-paper on FOSS by David A. Wheeler while additional information has been derived from different on-line sources and on-line experiment results that have been verified over several years.
Open Source Software has proved superior to their equivalent proprietary software. The following quantitative and qualitative software metrics have been used to compare Open Source Software and proprietary software;
Open Source Software has proved superior to their equivalent proprietary software. The following quantitative and qualitative software metrics have been used to compare Open Source Software and proprietary software;
- Total Cost of Ownership (TCO):FOSS based systems have very low investment to own.
- Security: FOSS software have been found to be more secure than proprietary software.
- Reliability: FOSS software are more reliable than proprietary software.
- Performance: The Performance of FOSS is superior relative to their proprietary counterparts.
- Scalability: FOSS are easily scalable
- FOSS protects its user from licensing litigation and management costs.
- FOSS encourages innovation