Some days ago I posted “Buy less, spend better”, highlighting one of the main benefits of adopting SpagoBI suite or, in general terms, of choosing an open source product adopting the pure open source delivery model.
Now you can argue that a product with no price has no value either. If you believe it, a short SpagoBI presentation will give you some answers.
No price doesn’t mean no value. Monetary value exists (money saved or better spent by purchasers or money earned by sellers) and non-monetary value exists as well. As for SpagoBI suite, its value for free comes from its being state-of-the-art software, from its completeness, flexibility and innovation, from its model avoiding both software and vendor lock-in. However, its main free value comes from the openness of SpagoBI team to new collaborations: collaboration is everything in open source. Even more, you get a great value also when you spend your money: you save your money since you don’t purchase any software license, but you also make your price according to your needs. With SpagoBI, you pay for the services when you need them, how long you need them.
Mainly, if you actively collaborate, you are not just using SpagoBI according to the real open source spirit; you are a member of the community, you are part of the project, you are in SpagoBI story, you yourself are SpagoBI! Be SpagoBI today!
By the way, don’t think I’m going crazy. This doesn’t only apply to SpagoBI community, which is just a sample here. This applies every time you decide to look beyond achieving immediate results, every time you embrace the spirit of the community and you try to give more. It’s the real open source approach, when it fosters freedom of software. It’s the path that leads to building the ecology of value.