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by sbuk 4926 days ago
Duncan, suggesting that it's that simple is extremely naive. OSS has costs too. I have no doubt that OSS would be cheaper, but it would be nice to see real world cost comparisons, and not the usual zealotry from the GPL lot.
1 comments

Both solutions will obviously have implementation and maintenance costs. Given that a free solution exists, however, anything spent over and above those costs - e.g. on licensing - is wasted.
It's not that black and white. The re-training costs alone could prove to be significantly more than the cost of a license. So no, it's not "wasted".
Please re-read my comment. I acknowledge that both solutions have implementation and maintenance costs - which include the cost of re-training.

Anything over and above that _is_ waste.

(FWIW, I dislike the term 'training'. Someone else said this first, but I agree: training is what you do to dogs, education is what you provide people.)

I dislike the term 'waste' when referring to software licensing over 'free' software. As I said, it's not as simple as you are suggesting. I pointer out training (semantically, it is training), but there are other costs and factors to consider. I'm not suggesting for one minute that OSS is a bad choice, just that it is not necessarily the most cost effective in short to medium term.