target audience: TECH BUYER  Publication date: Jun 2019 - Document type: IDC Perspective - Doc  Document number: # US45159319

Open Source Software: Choosing Between Community-Supported and Commercially Supported Products

By: 

  • Al Gillen
  • Susan G. Middleton Loading

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Abstract


This IDC Perspective discusses the pros and cons of using community-supported open source software versus using commercially supported, paid-for subscriptions of commercial implementations of OSS.

"The common belief is that community-supported, nonpaid OSS is less expensive to use than the commercial alternatives. While this might be true for some classes of workloads — developer and DevOps environments in particular — most application deployments that support revenue generation in some capacity are usually better served by a commercially supported platform because of the longer life cycle, predictable upgrade paths, and support for problems that may crop immediately or years after the product is put into production," said Al Gillen, GVP, Software Development and Open Source at IDC. "In the end, pairing OSS form factors will very much be driven by the workload and the importance of that workload."



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