No accounting software for Linux? | ZDNet
Summary
At the high end of the market this is obviously not true because products like Oracle Enterprise and SAP are supported about equally well on both Lintel and Wintel. The issue here isnt features, its organizational philosophy: the proprietary packages generally offer apparent risk reductions in exchange for real cash and your agreement to cede some systems, budgets, and organizational control to them - the open source packages, in contrast, can save you money, but only if you have the confidence to manage your IT investment on open source terms. In reality, you dont beat the other guy by adopting his software so the very best you can hope for is competitive parity - and your comeback to the vendor is usually limited to the extent of the vendors commitment to the employees you deal with; because you can get them fired, but suing a Microsoft, IBM, or SAP over software or their project management is just an exercise in going broke. Thus the bottom line on proprietary is simple: once youve sent a few hundred thousand bucks to Microsoft and some consulting firm getting Dynamics in, they own you - and theyll cash that chit every year. Most people never realize on this, of course; but put in open source, and you retain both the cash and the control that would otherwise go to the vendor while building organizational skills and possibly contributing to the evolution of the software community you join in doing this.
