Why is OSS Commercial Software So Expensive?

Nun das ist mal eine interessante Frage. Bevor jetzt wieder die ganzen Verschwörungstheoretiker aufjaulen: Sie kommt direkt aus dem Slashdot Forum.
OpenSource Software plus Support ist um einiges teurer als kommerzielle Software. An sich nichts neues, aber langsam greift dieses Wissen auch um sich. 

From Slashdot: An anonymous reader asks:
"Our startup honestly wanted to use OSS products. We do not want to spend time for any OSS bug fixing so our main requirement was -official support for all OSS products-. We thought were prepared to pay the price for OSS products, but then we got a price sticker shock. Now behold: QT is $3300 per seat. We have dropped the development and rewrote everything to C# (MSVS 2005 is ~$700). Embedded Linux from a reputable RT vendor is $25,000 per 5 seats per year. We needed only 3 seats. We had to buy 5 nevertheless. The support was bad. We will go for VxWorks or WinCE in our next product. Red Hat Linux WS is $299. An OEM version of Windows XP Pro is ~$140. A Cygwin commercial license will cost tens of thousands of dollars and is only available for large shops. We need 5 seats. Windows Unix services are free. After all, we have decided that the survival of our business is more important for us then 'do-good' ideas. Except for that embedded Linux (slated for WinCE or VxWorks substitution), we are not OSS shop anymore."
 Why are commercial ports of OSS software so expensive, and what would need to happen before they could be competitive in the future?

https://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/04/0452244&from=rss

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  Wieder eines der prestigeträchtigen großen Linux-am-Desktop Projekte, die "den Bach runtergehen". Nach Bergen-Belsen in Schweden (siehe "Aktueller Medienartikel - Bergen legt Linux Migration auf Eis") jetzt auch Birmingham. Und die Liste ließe sich fast