Has Open Source won the argument?

"Open Source software has won the argument...it is now generally accepted that the future will involve a blend of proprietary and open-source software" Not my words, but those of a leader in The Economist (a publication more known for a love of free markets than free software).

Why does The Economist like Open Source? Because it reduces the danger of lock-in. Lock-in is an insidious practice which harms customers and leads to monopolies.

"selling software to large companies was sometimes likened to drug dealing, because once a firm installed a piece of software, it had to pay a stream of licence fees for upgrades, security patches and technical support. Switching to a rival product was difficult and expensive. But with open-source software there was much less of a lock-in. There are no licence fees, and the file formats and data structures are open."

I'm a pragmatist on the choice of open source or proprietary software. As an individual I'll happily buy proprietary software if it saves me time or makes my life easier. With an institutional hat on, I'm much more cautious and try to think longer term - what will I get stung for next time? Will I have to buy the whole stack of all the vendor's other products?

True free software abolishes the headache of accounting for all the per user licenses. That's a huge advantage, but sometimes free software just isn't available to do what I want. Next best is proprietary software where the vendor will sell me an easy site licence based simply on head count. That still leaves me worried about data lock-in though. An open source company with a hybrid model - give away the standard product but charge me for the enterprise-ready clustered version - now that's pretty attractive. You'll be using open standards for data storage. Keep your licensing simple and server based (no CALs!). Finally, don't charge too much - but I'm not worried as if you ever do I can take that component out and switch to someone else.