[megatherium]

If open source is more expensive than proprietary software, why are so many major corporations using it for their web operations and so forth?

[NJ_gent]

"If open source is more expensive than proprietary software, why are so many major corporations using it for their web operations and so forth?"

Open source software is just another potential solution. When a company is evaluating software solutions, it ought to look at all possibilities and select the one which best fits its needs and price range (for TCO). Open source software often ends up being far suprior to proprietary solutions, especially in cases where there's little competition for the proprietary software. In other cases, either the quality or the support for open source alternatives for a particular application are lacking. In that case, proprietary software solutions may provide the best solution for that particular situation.

[NHResident]

The software is free, it's the support costs that will get you. The model for this used to be illustrated with the example of razor blade manufacturers that gave razors away free. All their profits came from a lifetime of buying razor blades.

The same principle applies here plus there are no deep-pocket liability is attached if the product ever proves to be defective. After all, all of the code was donated, debugged and evaluated by everyone.

(Although IBM claims to be spending on the order of $1Billion per year to make sure Linux is supportable - where do think the money to do that comes from?) OpenSource is NOT free.