Open Source or a commercial offering?

[Karl Auer]

On Wed, 2007-08-15 at 22:06 -0500, Anthony M Simonelli wrote:
> above.  That's $500 worth of work.  Now compared to a commercial
> offering such as the SonicWall TZ 180 TotalSecure 10 priced at $480
> that does all of the above, what is the benefit of running a free,
> open source solution?

If it goes wrong, you can fix it. If you don't like the way it works,
you can enhance it, improve it, extend it. There is no company to worry
about going belly up. The effort you expended has resulted in in-house
skills that are almost certainly applicable elsewhere, and are most
certainly applicable to the care and feeding of this box. The box is
perfectly matched to your needs, no compromises were necessary. You
controlled the quality of the components.

Is that enough?

Regards, K.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)                   +61-2-64957160 (h)
http://www.biplane.com.au/~kauer/                  +61-428-957160 (mob)