Inside sell

The best cases for Linux and open source in business often come the resourceful people who put it to use there. What they provide are patches of wisdom that add to everyone's understanding. Eventually resistance becomes futile because the advantages are understood too well. Here are three such "patches" from comments to just one Linux Journal online article:

With GNU/BSD licensed software at least, the receiver of the codebase is left in complete control. Even Microsoft could grab a copy of the code and configure/support it the same as with the Windows codebase. There's no corporate competition from OSS/Free software, just service companies that sell packages including it. - Chris Bergeron of http://pcburn.com/

In my experience, the main reason for buying into open source projects goes far beyond "wanting something the market doesn't offer". It's more about servicing business needs quickly. Who can wait for a vendor to respond to a request, when it's so much easier to take pre-existing OSS systems or code and improve them slightly to solve your particular problem? With ever-decreasing timeframes, OSS makes the impossible possible. - Dave Moskovitz of http://www.thinktank.co.nz/dave/

For an IT professional, it often takes less time to install and configure an open source package than to get approval to "buy" (actually, enter into a license for) a proprietary one. Transaction costs aren't just between vendor organization and customer organization -- they're within organizations. - Anonymous

Source: Getting Flat, Part I: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8251