In practice open-source software is generally free or cheap to acquire, and the licensing regime is not onerous either to administer or to fund. Commercial software, by contrast, does not distribute its source code, and generally requires ongoing payments in respect of licensed software, which must be administered and calculated according to the terms of the licenses. With commercial software you also lose your control over your business code. In most cases support and service is slower than support and service you may get from the open-source communities.
