OpenSourceProviders:About

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[edit] About Open Source Providers

One of the main benefits of using Open Source software in business is avoiding vendor lock-in. When you deploy any software solution, you invest a lot of time, cost, and energy to convert data, learn how to use the software, and integrate with other systems. With proprietary software, once you've made the investment, you're pretty much stuck. Switching vendors means switching software, incurring additional expense.

In the Open Source world, no vendor has an exclusive lock on the software. If you own your software, you can hire anybody to fix it for you. With Open Source software, you don't necessarily own the software, but you have the right to generally do whatever you want with it.

Avoiding vendor lock-in is a key benefit of open source software. But at Freelock Computing, we found it hard to prove this to our customers--being the only open source provider our potential customers had ever encountered, they didn't believe us. If they couldn't find another provider to support an open source solution we provided, what's the difference between us and a proprietary software company?

We started this site to definitively answer this question.

[edit] Why advertise our competition?

We believe that for the vast majority of businesses, computers are a hassle. Most people don't want to mess around with computers and software. There are hundreds of thousands of small businesses who need to use computers, but have no desire to become a computer expert. We believe the market for open source providers is enormous, and currently limited by a lack of publicity more than anything else. The more providers that get listed here, the more it establishes the market.

[edit] Are you an open source provider?

We would love to have you listed here. This site is a Wiki, meaning you can add or edit pages as desired. Because we have limited time available for managing this site but want to ensure its quality, you must have a user account to make any changes to this site. To get a user account, contact us, being sure to include:

  • Your email address
  • Your web site

We will check out your web site before giving you an account. If you advertise open source services on your web site, we'll happily give you an account, and you can then add your business and services.

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