[yakshaving_jgt]

Sure, there's ample opportunity for everyone in the industry to throw money into the sea.

The comment that I was replying to specifically referred to employee time per month. That's naturally going to be different from some high-rate consultant, so this is totally an apples-to-oranges comparison.

Furthermore, it's a large market and there are plenty of consultancies in Europe charging significantly less than that.

[Xylakant]

I’ve had a quick look into some of the tools on the list. We even use at least one, but we still pay for the hosted solution. Why?

* We’re a shop full of developers, but none of us have the required skill set to host and debug a python app.

* We’re fairly well booked. Any time I’d assign one of the folks to maintaining tool X, I’d have to take from time assigned to client work. Which means the internal cost is not what’s interesting. What counts is “how much do I loose by not having them work in billable hours?”

All of this means that the calculation is strongly tilted in favor of buy.

[yakshaving_jgt]

For you perhaps, in your circumstances. Surely you weren't thinking you could project your specific circumstance to software development companies more broadly?