Lone Wolves

Here at Lone Wolves we do more than just blog and write open source software. We have a small company as well and we build websites for equally small businesses in the area. It's nothing big, not even full time, but it pays for this website and the servers we need to keep our projects running. It's Linux that made this possible. If we would have been stuck on the Windows platform there is no way we could have done what we do because it would simply have been too expensive.

I'l admit that our company is a bit of a special case so I'll give some background first. Skip this paragraph if you are just here for the gory details. When we started this company we had two requirements. The first was financial independence. We did not want the company income added to our personal income for tax reasons. The second requirement was that it had to be cheap. Here in The Netherlands the cheapest financially independent company form (a so-called B.V.) needs € 18.000,- starting capital. Other forms are usually considered ill-suited to run a company and make money. But making money was not what we were after. We just needed a way to pay the bills for our hobbies. In the end we settled for a Foundation. It's cheap to set up, financially independent and it's able to make money. It's just not able to give away the money to stakeholders, that's all. Perfect for us!

Enough of the boring background and back to the money. We had about € 1.500,- to set up our company, buy the hardware and software we needed and get going. We managed, thanks to Linux. We would have needed at least 3-4 times the amount we had if we were stuck on Windows. Our setup isn't too complicated. We have two desktop PC's that we use to build websites, one in each of our homes. We also each have one server. They are used as development server, as webserver for the applications we cannot put on shared hosting (such as subversion and bugzilla) and we use them as backup servers. They are also each other's failover. For this comparison I am leaving out anything that would have been the same in either scenario, such as the shared hosting, hardware, domain names, etcetera. I am also leaving out the work we put in—the fabled "TCO". The time we put in is free and no matter what environment we would use, it would have taken time to implement. TCO is interesting for companies that pay for maintenance. We don't.

I am going to give you three scenarios. The first one will show the cost if we would have drunk the kool-aid and bought the latest and greatest of anything we needed and Microsoft or it's preferred ISVs offered. The second scenario shows a more realistic Windows setup that we would use on a tight budget. The third scenario is what we actually use: Linux.

Scenario 1: Bill Gates and partners are my heroes

We love Bill Gates and anything he cares to sell us. And sell us he will. A hefty € 6.440,- towards his pockets. More than four times our entire starting "capital". See the sidebar for the exact list of software we would have bought in this case. One server would get MS-SQL to run the development sites. One server would get SourceSafe and run our code repository. It's not entirely true to our current setup because the servers cannot use each other as a failsafe. We would need to double-up on SourceSafe and SQL server licenses for that. Also, I have no idea how CAL's work so that might have further driven up the cost of a public code repository. Notice that under "We love Bill" we would be programming .NET sites.

Scenario 2: A realistic Windows shop

In this scenario we owe Bill and his band of brothers only € 2.800,-. Less than half the previous scenario but still well over our total starting budget. We replaced Vista with XP. Replaced the development enviroment with PHP and it's associated tools and replaced one server with a cheaper SBS edition. In this scenario the failsafe problem from the previous scenario solved because the code repository and the SQL server are open source software. The added cost of one regular 2003 server over the SBS server is because the SBS license only allows one SBS server. All other servers need to be regular 2003 servers. If I had to design a webdevelopment shop based on Windows, this is how I'd do it. Maybe I would add € 320,- to replace one Paint Shop Pro with Photoshop, but only if the developer makes use of the extra features.

Scenario 3: Our Linux shop

Here is the setup we are currently using. Everything runs Debian Etch GNU/Linux. We use Bluefish and Kate for programming, and GIMP and Inkscape for graphics. Backups are done automagically with rsync. It's all open source software and all pretty standard stuff at that. Because it costs nothing we were able to spend our entire starting capital on registering the company, buying hardware and getting hosted. I was able to cheaply get a second hand HP ProLiant from my old boss, who also donated some even older HP NetServers (hat-tip to DHL).

In short, without Linux, our company, our self-financed hobby would not exist. I am sure the same is true for many start-ups. Hardware prices have been going down over the years but the cost of proprietary software has only risen. Start-ups need much more of an IT infrastructure to get going and the license costs are dragging them down. How much more capital would be invested in actually useful things if open source software was the norm instead of the exception? It is no coincidence that virtually all the successful start-ups of today are powered by open source software. Without it, I would still be sitting in the basement, wondering how I'm going to pay for another year of webhosting.