ton209 wrote:Why don't you make eValid open source so we can all use it without having to worry about your stupid license fees?
Well, uh, thanks, we guess, for your question. Maybe.
Actually, our finance department doesn't think the license fees are stupid at all but then again, that is what they are supposed to think!
We see a LOT about open source these days...the collaborative approach is a good and effective one for a certain class of product where firms who would
be using it can afford the technical staff time and the risk involved. It's important to emphasize, in an open source project, that you have no real idea of what the quality of the product is -- it being open source you have to accept what it is and what it does and if you don't like that then you're free to build your own version.
But that can be very, very expensive. We've heard of cases where a company spends 15x or 20x the cost of a commercial product to produce a working version of an open source system, only to find at the end of the day
that they don't have something that is realiable and effective.
The thinking here is this: people who want to test a web browser enabled application really can't afford the risk of something for which the origin is of some question, but instead want the security of knowing they are buying a stable product for which, if there IS a problem, someone will be on the hook
to fix it.
The level of professional responsibility that comes with a product for which
there is a license fee is the main "comfort factor" that most organizations are completely comfortable with paying for...
The eValid Team
Why Don't You Make eValid Open Source?
by ton209 » Tue Aug 18, 2009 4:16 pm