[mlyle]

I think this misses the point, though-- no matter how true it is.

The costs associated with procuring the existing, proprietary solution are understood and accepted. If it goes wrong, it's a risk that the organization has collectively selected together.

Advocating for doing something cheaper doesn't gain any individual person that much necessarily, and incurs outsized risk. It also incurs a lot of explicit, poorly-understood costs outside of those already accepted and recurring costs.

[ensignavenger]

Selling any sort of change to any company is usually very hard. It has nothing to do with proprietary versus open source. Open Source is a major selling point, and the Open Source community can/needs to do better explaining the value proposition of Open Source. That is why companies that wish to sell change employ salespeople.

[mlyle]

Right. I don't think anyone else in this thread really said that it had something to do with proprietary vs. open source or even very much to do with free-as-in-beer vs. costly.