The real question is perhaps how one allocates the inevitable cost of IT. Steven O'Grady of RedMonk recalls that years ago Windows helped people move from the high licensing costs of Unix to deliver applications with lower price points, just as Linux is helping people move away from Windows licensing now. "Windows has helped reduce the total cost of solutions over time, [and] open source has taken that to the next level. In some cases, the total cost of the solution itself can be what you have to build on top of it." Businesses will then invest in service and support instead of licensing. O'Grady says, "What open source has done is not make everything free or remove the costs of software, but instead shifted the up-front licensing model to what Sun's Simon Phipps calls 'paying at the point of value."

His reference is to an article by Phipps last year about "Software Market 3.0," about the deployer being "liberated to pay just for the things that result in value," and paying when value starts to be realized "instead of at the point of acquisition of the bits." Essentially, the costs are minimized up front, and triggered only as the enterprise ramps up and invests in whatever support is necessary to actually operate the system.

Drum Roll, Please...

It may be argued that the financial consideration of deploying Linux over any other system will all come down to TCO. True, perhaps...but one thing that we've managed to highlight in considering the variables is that the kind of expense rolled up within the TCO matters. For many, even if the TCO were equal, the shift in the type of expense that Linux achieves can commend it over Windows or other proprietary systems as a wise financial decision.

Summarizing the seven financial reasons to use Linux comes down, I believe, to the last reason offered: paying at the point of value. In one way or another, an aspect of each of the foregoing reasons pokes its head up in this single concept, which truly represents the coup de grace in settling the question.

Brent Toderash recently left the IT consulting firm of which he was an owner and manager (disclosure: with Scott Toderash, quoted above) to become a freelance writer, thinker, strategist and consultant. Founding editor of Penguinista.org, which he ran from 1999 to 2003, he lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and blogs at toderash.net.