True Cost of Open Source
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Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 1133] True cost of open source
From: Marian Thacher mthacher at otan.us
Date: Wed May 16 00:30:57 EDT 2007
I'm glad you brought this up, Tim. We (OTAN) went with a vendor for
hosting service for Moodle, because we couldn't support it on our existing
servers. So, as my boss is always telling me, free isn't really free.
Do others find this to be true?
Marian
- 1. The true cost of Open Source (free) software. I support several Moodle installations and am currently looking at Sakai. These products are very appealing due to the quality, flexibility and of course not having to pay for the initial product and licenses. However, there are still costs associated with them, such as server space, system administration, database maintenance etc. Leecy mentioned some of these costs in one of her posts, and I am always curious to see if people have placed a specific value on the resources needed to offer online PD beyond purchasing a commercial product. This would include both using a management system and other formats.
