Image via Wikipedia
There are a couple of schools of thought, when it comes to the issue of using free software for business purposes. Some people are of the opinion that when it comes to business, it is important to shell out for the best software that money can buy. And other people are of the opinion that you can save yourself a lot of money and intellectual property issues by simply using free software at every possible opportunity. While everybody is inevitably going to think that they are individually right, both sides of this particular debate have their hearts in the right place and their heads screwed on properly. The trick is in figuring out which path is better for you to take.
On the one hand, you have got the people who believe that free software is the best kind. This is the trade off of money (which you can keep) and time. See, it is often going to take more time for you to have free software properly investigated by yout IT staff, and for the necessary training of your employees in how to use it properly. While this might be beneficial down the road, since training is often necessary for any kinds of new programs, it may take longer since you will not have any help from a vendor’s sales rep.
But on the other hand, there are a lot of people who would argue that the money that you are spending on paid for software is going toward having a higher quality standard. After all, a lot of free software may be open source, which means that some components of it might be unstable, or even unusable. In a situation of that nature, you might find that your entire operation grinds to a halt because of an unforeseen bug in the program. Generally, companies test out their software rigorously, which saves you time.
