Re: Sure
Cheapskates? I choose open source alternatives for clients firstly based on their needs, secondly based on their budget and finally because I want the project out of the way and done, I don't want to fuck around waiting for quotes, negotiating discounts picking this tier over that one etc etc...also for most clients expertise is more valuable than software licenses, so they'd rather pay for an expert to be available when they need them than spunk their entire budget up the wall on licenses.
It's not about being cheap, it's about allocating the money where you think it's most important. If you spend the biggest chunk of your budget on licensing, you end up with not a lot left to keep the experts around to maintain, operate and develop on your kit. The same money is being spent, just less of it is allocated to licenses. If you decide to ditch MSSQL for Postgres for example, you could be saving enough money for an extra engineer or two.
In days of yore there used to be incentives for people to sling licenses from the likes of Oracle, Microsoft et al...you'd get a commission out of the sale to make up for the lower rates you had to charge to accommodate licenses in a given budget...that all disappeared a long time ago and left a black hole for people in terms of income...so rates went up...and to accommodate for that, the boots on the ground started peeling off the layers of licensed software to make up for it. Do we really need that MSSQL license? Can we find the same features and performance or better elsewhere? Do we really need a third domain controller with all the extra CALs? Do we need to use IIS with an "Internet Connector License"? Do we really need a bare metal Windows server to run that Windows specific software, or can we virtualise Windows 11 instead and use the rest of the resources for something else?
In my earlier days, decades ago, I was predominantly a Microsoft guy (professionally anyway) and I used to get kickbacks from volume licensing (about 10-15%), a share of ongoing subscription licenses, and various perks for being qualified (which incentivised more training, and the pursuit of more certs) that enabled me to provide lower rates to clients, which gave them more budget for licenses...I started to see all this tapering off (and the savings found by Microsoft etc were not handed to the customer, they just pocketed it) and it became and tougher and tougher to operate in that world because Microsoft etc wanted a bigger slice of the cake and it came at my expense, the customer was still paying the same as far as they were concerned,but I was staring at the abyss considering dropping my rates...I saw the writing on the wall early and started to taper off my use of Microsoft products, so I never had to drop my rates, in fact I was able to increase them...where they were the default choice they no longer were...eventually it became more about time than money...I wanted to be able to visit a client on a Monday to build a spec, return on Tuesday to start deploying and be complete on Wednesday then paid the end of that month no problems...that's pretty difficult with commercial licensing involved because whilst I have to wait 30 days to be paid, licensing is always paid up front...so if the licensing is more expensive than expected, it's me that gets the kick in the balls...either less pay or I have to wait an additional 30 days while the customer sorts out their cashflow etc...commercial licensing can fuck you on more aspects than just cost...working with Oracle and Microsoft is like having a really shitty team member that doesn't give a fuck about you, your project or your customer.