Cost

Open source software is free to use with all future updates and upgrades also freely available.

Extended Hardware Life

Open source software applications are far more efficient than many proprietary software applications so there is no need to keep changing hardware each time new versions are released.

Legal

Because open source software does not have the same licensing restraints as proprietary software, organisations no longer have the legal overhead of ensuring they have purchased sufficient licenses for the software they use.

Open Standards

Data standards are open so organisations are not locking their data into a standard owned by a single commercial software company.

Quality

Open source software has been developed, reviewed and tested by many thousands of developers so the end product is stable, secure and functional.

Security

Open source software is very secure and is not prone to the same level of viruses and attacks as associated with many proprietary software in use today.

Try Before You Commit

As open source is free, the software is available to be evaluated within organisations at no cost. Therefore, if a certain product does not meet requirements, organisations will not have committed any funds to the evaluation.

Customisation

If organisations require additional features within any open source product, they can either participate in the community to ensure those features are included in the next release or change the application software directly with the features needed.