Open Source or a commercial offering?

[Andrew Zajac]

On 8/16/07, Bart Silverstrim <bsilver at chrononomicon.com> wrote:

> Would it take an hour or two?  Add another hour or two if you're doing
> it from scratch, at least, for updates and installing the OS, etc...

If you want to argue that, then my argument saves the company double
(or more) by not having to buy, install and update windows server or
whatever windows platform on which you will run a mail server.

And installing/updating Ubuntu server takes a lot less time than
installing windows.



> Otherwise, sure.  If I specialized in building these boxes.  Most
> businesses have tech departments that don't do this all the time,
> though, no?  I've found that if I have to rebuild a system for this
> purpose once every couple years, there's a learning and re-learning
> curve to get up to speed with changes in the OS/distro, new methods of
> stopping spam, newer filters, etc...
>

That's the thing about a learning curve, it's not a constant slope.

But the same goes for any proprietary software you would install.  You
mean to tell me that you can pay $500.00, install and close your eyes
that it will do what you want it to?

> > So, I guess you would have saved some money by paying someone for
> > support and services instead of doing it yourself.
>
> If a business has the money to go either way, I think the question
> becomes more of a "do I want to have someone in-house to invest in and
> not have to depend on an outside company for everything, or do I want to
> spend money on outsourcing this and depend on outsiders for
> liability/etc. but have someone to blame when things don't work?

FLOSS or Proprietary both require professional services and support.
Period.  You cannot assume that a production server will take care of
itself forever and ever.


az