It somehow never actually happens this way, but I would happily spend twice as much for any open source product simply because I get more control, predictability, and utility out of it.
If you want to pay rather a lot more than merely twice as much you can get source from MS too, and still not get all the utility because it comes with ndas and no ocean of other user hackers who want the same obvious things you do.
Spending time on an open tool is an investment that you do because it pays off. Spending your own time, or paying a developer (hired in house or consultant), or paying license fees for a closed product are all just things you spend to get the result.
It has nothing to do with your time being worthless. If your own time is too super valuable to spend directly building, then the choice is not "pay MS to do it or do it myself", it's pay an employee to do it one way or pay an employee to do it another way.
You pay an employee 100k and MS 100k, or you pay 2 employees. You get 10x more value out of two humans producing work that you 100% own and get to have every important detail exactly how you want it, and then it works for as long as you want it. Even with the churn from security updates and popular fads, anything you invested in building, you still get to use forever if you want. No serial number ever expires, no activation ever blocks your ability to make backups and hot spares and parallel extra capacity. And those humans actively solve new weird problems in a way no piece of software or software licence ever can.
The reason not to pay MS is not because it costs money, it's because you get shit for it.
If you want to pay rather a lot more than merely twice as much you can get source from MS too, and still not get all the utility because it comes with ndas and no ocean of other user hackers who want the same obvious things you do.
Spending time on an open tool is an investment that you do because it pays off. Spending your own time, or paying a developer (hired in house or consultant), or paying license fees for a closed product are all just things you spend to get the result.
It has nothing to do with your time being worthless. If your own time is too super valuable to spend directly building, then the choice is not "pay MS to do it or do it myself", it's pay an employee to do it one way or pay an employee to do it another way.
You pay an employee 100k and MS 100k, or you pay 2 employees. You get 10x more value out of two humans producing work that you 100% own and get to have every important detail exactly how you want it, and then it works for as long as you want it. Even with the churn from security updates and popular fads, anything you invested in building, you still get to use forever if you want. No serial number ever expires, no activation ever blocks your ability to make backups and hot spares and parallel extra capacity. And those humans actively solve new weird problems in a way no piece of software or software licence ever can.
The reason not to pay MS is not because it costs money, it's because you get shit for it.