[TriLUG] Where is Linux today?

[Christopher L Merrill]

Cristóbal Palmer wrote:
> most circumstances you'd have to be able to answer yes to ALL the
> following questions to justify use:
> 
> * Is the functionality offered by the software ONLY available from
> this proprietary code?
> * Is the functionality critical to success?
> * Have you tried alternative functionality and demonstrated that it's untenable?
> * Have you given support to actors developing an Open Source alternative?

I guess for me (us), the approach is based more on driving our business
forward, so the only question to answer is:
- Which software gets us the best solution at the lowest total cost?
"Best" is pretty subjective, but cost becomes easily calculated based on
purchase and maintenance price, setup cost and long term labor savings (if
applicable).

No software is free for us, since we have to spend time/resources to set it
up and keep it running.  We pay someone else to do much of the maintenance
of our Linux-based systems...and we think (hope) that the total cost is lower.
Open or closed?  Free or commercial?  Neither matters much to us - only the
bang for the buck (and time IS money).

> I notice you work for webperformance, and I notice y'all sell some software:
>   http://www.webperformanceinc.com/products/
> as well as providing complete outsourcing:
>   http://www.webperformanceinc.com/services/
> 
> It looks like on the product end you've got something like a MySQL
> model (free basic, paid full) going on. Is that correct? Furthermore,
> what license do you use for the stuff you allow people to use without
> paying?

Well, kinda.  There is a free product and our commercial product which
has a very usable demo version freely available.  You can get a fair
amount of work done with both the free version and the demo version.  Our
license is the typical commercial license boilerplate crap.  We have
considered opening our source, but we don't see there would be much benefit
to it.  There is almost no activity in the open source projects in our market
and it's obvious in the quality of the open-source competitors - they're all
pretty bad.  In our market, there is demand for free software, but not
open-source software (unless it's also free).

> Did I answer your questions?

yup.

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Chris Merrill                           |  Web Performance, Inc.
chris at webperformance.com                |  http://webperformance.com
919-433-1762                            |  919-845-7601

Website Load Testing and Stress Testing Software & Services
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