The biggest barrier in our opinion to open source software is that because it is free at source most assume it cannot be as good as commercial alternatives. This is a misunderstanding because we believe the two offer totally different things. Open source software is kept that way because it is a shared resource for programmers and developers who benefit from their input by getting 'free' input from all the others. This community of programmers has produced most of the software that runs the internet including the superb Apache webserver (running on this host) and many others. However open source software is rarely a `finished product` as it has to allow for this constant changing and also has to remain broad enough that many users will contribute to it's development. It is usually the case that when an open source product is developed to a great degree the programmers will licence their version and take it out of the loop although many open source programs have a public licence which forbids anyone from licencing different versions so open source software it not usually preferred by programming houses.

So anyway enough of our opinions here's a paper written about exactly this subject..

NewsFeed