Given that open source software is free, readily available, and of high quality, why doesn’t everyone use it for everything? In this case, by “everyone” I’m referring to small-business owners and the general public, as opposed to employees of large corporations, where decisions about which software to use are often made by IT professionals rather than the end-users they support.
And perhaps the question should be rephrased as “Why do so many people not use any open source software at all?” After all, open source software can’t really be used for “everything” because, even with over 100,000 projects in existence, open source alternatives are not available for “everything.” In fact, some have argued that open source software is only suited to general-use applications where there’s a large enough community of knowledgeable programmers to sustain a project. According to this argument, specialized software will always remain commercial and proprietary (however, OpenEMed, the subject of a later chapter, is a counterexample).
Not too long ago the answer to “Why do so many people not use any open source software at all?” would have been that you could use open source software for a great many purposes as long as you wanted to badly enough, and most people simply didn’t want to badly enough. Taking early distributions of Linux as an example, geeks might have delighted in using it, but installation, configuration, and maintenance were too difficult for mere mortals who just wanted to get their work done. However, this is increasingly less the case. Open source software is becoming comparable to commercial software in ease of installation, configuration, and use.
Obviously there are other reasons why a great many self-employed professionals like CPAs and attorneys, to take one category of potential end-users as an example, haven’t yet jumped on the open source bandwagon. With Linux in particular, the distinction between open source software and commercial software has been blurred by the sale of competing installation packages for various versions. To many consumers, open source software is just another buzzword amid the constant cacophony of marketing hype they find themselves immersed in. As discussed in the strategic analysis in an earlier chapter, many people also have an inherent skepticism of anything that’s touted as free and have concluded that, whatever its claims to the contrary, product evangelism is seldom entirely altruistic, and may in fact conceal a commercial interest.
There’s also inertia. What helps overcome end-users’ skepticism is endorsement of open source software by their peers.