How do you put a value on the products created through open source? Do you consider all the time spent crafting quality software? Take into account your own effort in advocating its use? Charge for packaging and a profit margin? How, exactly, would Best Buy have come to the conclusion that Ubuntu Linux is worth $19.99? I think the answer is fairly simple: they guessed.

You see, putting a price on open source is about as difficult as nailing jelly to a tree. You could charge in the ballpark of competing software (Windows Vista, which starts at $199.99 and runs up to $299.99), but I'll bet people would balk at that, with claims about it being available free, you can't sell open source for that kind of money, and so forth. Although, a Red Hat Enterprise edition will run you about $349 (with 1 year support), and that's built on open source.

Maybe it's because Red Hat sells it; a company that has put a lot of effort and code into the product. I can buy that (literally). Here's a company that's been involved in open source for about as long as Linux has been around. They deserve to sell free software, and make a profit from it. Okay, now how about Dell? They sell Red Hat and Ubuntu on some of their systems, and just a quick comparison of systems shows me that Ubuntu costs an extra $20 over a Windows-based system (check out their Desktop Inspiron). Not bad, for a free OS, but I think they seriously undervalue it. Would there be an outcry if they charged Vista prices?

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