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There has been a lot of debate over the last year about the “Total Cost of Ownership” (TCO) of Linux and Open Source Software. Microsoft’s latest marketing campaign against Linux called “Get the Facts” attempts to claim that Linux is more expensive by spinning statistics from Microsoft funded studies.

I have always been interested in promoting and advertising Linux and as part of my LinuxReview.net website I created a section called “Linux in Action“. This section is supposed to showcase articles, whitepapers, case studies, and research about Linux adoption.

I have also recently found another site that was created as a Linux/OSS “Get the Facts” site. This is a great site that is similar to what I wanted “Linux in Action” to become.

Today I read an article (”Maddog rails against ‘false’ TCO debate“) on Jon “Maddog” Hall’s take on the whole TCO marketing battle. He talks about “empowerment and the quality of the solution” and about supporting local economies rather than large corporations that may be overseas in other countries.

This got me thinking about another aspect of using Linux and Open Source Software. I have always applied this line of thinking specifically with my support for open standards and open file formats but I now think it applies in a broader sense. I have always argued that in relying on proprietary file formats you do not actually own your data. Your data is essentially controlled by the vendor who supplied the tools to access those formats. As many people and businesses alike have found out, it is hard to switch from a totally proprietary system to any other system. If you can’t do whatever you want, where ever you want, however you want with your data then you don’t own/control it.

The same rhetoric can be applied to almost any aspect your IT infrastructure. From the OS to any part of the stack of applications and services you have running on top of it. Open Source and open standards allow you to take control of your data. That is the “true” cost of ownership in my opinion — more control of you future.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 19th, 2005 at 5:49 pm and is filed under Linux. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but I reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.