In \"enterprise\" environments, I\'ve observed a strong prejudice towards propri

Question

In "enterprise" environments, I've observed a strong prejudice towards proprietary software. Even in large business that use Java, it is unusual to find MySQL or PostgreSQL, and WebSphere and WebLogic are strongly preferred over JBoss or Tomcat.

This is very understandable. While many developers prefer Tomcat or Postgres to WebSphere or Oracle DB, they are not the ones that make the final decisions in these matters. Whoever does make the decision regarding which DBs and application servers will be used in production will find that the licence fees seem quite small compared to being fired for choosing the free software that caused something really, really, bad to happen.

I'm not asking the question of whether Postgres is as good as Oracle. That's not the point. Oracle doesn't get chosen over Postgres after a careful considerations of features and benchmarks. Postgres doesn't enter the conversation, because free software isn't trusted in certain places.

I'm curious if this lack of trust came about in response to any specific events. So my question is this: Are there any documented cases of business calamities (failures, significant loss of revenue, significant loss of corporate data, etc.) that were shown to be the result of deficiencies in open-source software?

Clarification: If you have experience with enterprise level companies that fully embrace OSS, that have to prejudice in the matter but make choices based on the needs of the particular situation, then Good for you! Your experience doesn't change the fact that other enterprise companies have a very different attitude, and my question is valid even if these companies are in the minority.

Explanation / Answer

Are there some prejudices, yes perhaps in some cases. For large organizations however this path to expensive proprietary application servers and other expensive software suites given them some advantages and securities that some rarely think about.

1) Support: Typically when a large corporation has million dollar software the support is built into the contract. I don't need to delve into the advantages of having application support.

2) Leverage: Expensive proprietary software, especially niche software have fewer clients and independent users. If a large corporate client decides not to renew a contract then it can seriously affect the bottom line of the vendor. Many of them use this leverage to push for features and fixes that they may not be able to influence into open-source software. The argument for open-source states that the large corporation can contribute its own changes and features into the project for the good of all, but that would involve developers time which they try to avoid.

3) Security: And I don't mean as in encryption and firewalls and stuff. Open source projects come and go, some are widely supported and surpass the proprietary software. Many fail or just lose contributors over time. If they are stuck with this software for 20 years down the road is the open source community going to continue to support this? With proprietary software, the money you pay as a client encourages the vendor to stay in business as long as you continue to pay him.

As far as a story where open source blew up in my companies face, a long running project that was started on an uncommonly heard of ORM mapper that was open source. The project just stopped as the main contributor died or something, then the company was left with an expensive refactoring effort to move to a proprietary library. It happens and these kinds of scenarios scare the crap out of large corporations.

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