Microsoft's power is based on its dominance in PC operating systems, thus being able to dictate "standards" as a method of undermining its competitors in other areas, and doing this repeatedly in a calculated manner, thereby constantly garnering onto themselves even more power. Power over software that has gained the status of a "standard" gives immense power over the people who subscribe to this standard. These people, quite unthinking, are happily entering into what could prove for them to be an expensive, perhaps dangerous, dependency. For though it may not be immediately obvious, by choosing a proprietary product, the success of the customer is linked to the success of the software provider. Even in this case, where it indeed seems like a sure thing, do you want to risk your future betting everything on a one horse race?

Software's value is often determined by the maintenance it gets, without which it may lose its usefulness very quickly. The user very rarely buys proprietary software outright, only the rights to the use of a single version. And, since this version is, of necessity static, it's usability can deteriorate at an alarming rate. Often this deterioration is more perceived than actual fact, and occurs with the active encouragement of the software developer in an effort to convince the customer that he needs to buy the latest "upgrade".

Even if all development has been in a direction congruent with the user's needs, the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of a software upgrade often goes far beyond the first raw cost. The always hidden cost of the hardware upgrade often needed to run the new software is a very real threat. This is not the case with Free Software, incremental changes made to increase a program's functionality seldom require hardware upgrades of any sort much less the major ones usually needed to allow the latest O/S to work properly if at all.

Jamaica has bought Microsoft's PR hype like "puss in bag", the other options having probably never even been seen, much less explored, as would befit the examination of choices that will impact on our nation's finances and possibly even our Information Technology (IT) competitiveness worldwide, for many years to come.

However, all is not lost, the offerings of, The Free Software Foundation (FSF), their associate Debian, and their competitor BSD, are actually free in every sense of the word. This makes the exploration of the Unix world via GNU/Linux, a relatively cheap exercise, even at this late stage of the game. Especially viable in view of the fact that those computers discarded as obsolete in the last Windows upgrade merry-go-round, are easily capable of running any of these other extremely powerful Operating Systems.

An overview of the GNU Project.

Categories of Free and Non-Free Software.