Comment by ArnoVW
8 days ago
my more generous interpretation of the situation is that people do not see the work / effort / complexity of operating a solution. They think that open source is free, when in reality it is cheaper (generally) but not free.
You need to pay the hosting. You need to install it, configure it, and patch it. And when stuff breaks, you have no one to call upon but yourself.
But, as you say, if you can do all of that, open source is amazing value.
Exactly this. The sticker price of open source is zero but the total cost of ownership is your team's time. I've talked to CTOs who spent more engineering hours configuring and maintaining free tools than they would have spent on a managed alternative. They just couldn't see it because the cost was buried in salary, not a line item on an invoice.