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The BBC has an interesting report about Open Source.

A report funded by the European Commission concludes that the software could offer considerable savings to organisations with little effect on their business. The report found that in "almost all" cases long-term costs could be reduced by switching from proprietary software produced by firms such as Microsoft.

We develop mainly in ASP and have long and large debates on whether to switch to open source. To that end we have started to work with partners developing CMS solutions using open source systems.

My personal opinion is that it doesn’t matter what platform you use as long as you are getting a return. I also think that it is all about user experience. If you are switching to open source for the cost savings alone, I would suggest that is not a good reason. It may save you money, but it may also cost you even more.

Long-term, I see many software platforms becoming Open Source. The source is free (in most cases) and the support you have is from and by people you wouldn’t get access to in the closed source environment.

The European Commission’s report mentions this with existing Open Source available valued at a cost of £8 billion to develop, equivalent to £525 million in voluntary contributions from Programmers each year.