Hidden costs of proprietary software

On December 2, 2008, customers of SonicWALL woke up to broken firewalls. This wasn’t the result of a real problem in the firewalls; it was a result of SonicWALL’s DRM server malfunctioning and deactivating all customer firewalls.

The relationship between customers and vendors of proprietary software is fundamentally adversarial: proprietary vendors have business models where customer activity (like installing Windows on a desktop) requires payment to the vendor. Because the activity happens entirely on the customer side and paying the vendor conflicts with the customer’s desire to save money, proprietary software vendors don’t trust their customers to pay them.

Articles abound about the “hidden costs” of using free, open-source software. Many of them are sponsored by companies with a stake in their own proprietary solutions — and they’re responding to the threat of increasing enthusiasm about free alternatives. Some of the claims are legitimate; others are FUD.

Here at Four Kitchens, we’re on the opposite side. We advocate using free software like Drupal (and our own free-software derivative, Pressflow) whenever possible. When it’s not immediately possible, it’s a hard decision between writing a free solution and going proprietary. We enjoy the freedom of free software for many reasons, especially because it doesn’t feel like we’re fighting the company behind the software in order to get the most out of it.