A piece of the action

Governments the world over spend billions on Microsoft products and other proprietary software. Open source advocates contend their wares are cheaper and better. On one side of the tug of war is Bill Gates and other entrepreneurial heavyweights who say their software is secure and well-supported On the other side are grassroots techies who contend that open source software (such as Linux) is more adaptable, innovative and convenient
Kate Heartfield The Ottawa Citizen

Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS)? Look at the Numbers!

David A. Wheeler dwheeler@dwheeler.com Revised as of August 20, 2002
This paper provides quantitative data that, in many cases, using open source software / free software is a reasonable or even superior approach to using their proprietary competition according to various measures. This paper examines market share, reliability, performance, scalability, security, and total cost of ownership. It also has sections on non-quantitative issues, unnecessary fears, usage reports, other sites providing related information, and ends with some conclusions. You can view this paper at http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html (HTML format); it is also available in PDF format. Palm PDA users can view it in Plucker format (you will also need Plucker to read it). Old archived copies are also available.