On Fri, Aug 27, 2010 at 01:01:26PM -0500, Mike Miller wrote:
> Related to that problem, once I have skills with some program, then I 
> become an advocate for it.  I don't want to work for the sales or 
> marketing division of a software company.  I especially don't want to push 
> students to use a program that's going to cost them an arm and a leg after 
> they graduate.  An example of this is SAS.  We used it a lot and taught 
> students how to use it.  We never paid much for it.  One day I wanted to 
> put SAS on a new Linux box and I expected the usual site-license pricing 
> but SAS Corp said no -- we could have the usual university discount, but 
> the site license was for other UNIX OSs, not for Linux.  Now I found out 
> that SAS with university discount costs $3,800/year and for a student who 
> graduates and wants his company to buy it or wants to buy it himself for 
> consulting work, it would cost five times as much: $19,000/year.  That 
> made my blood boil.  I stopped using SAS and now I use GNU R.  GNU R is 
> (A) better than SAS in most ways, (B) it is the top choice of serious 
> academic statisticians and (C) it is free software, both in dollars and in 
> terms of restrictions on the user.

I can definitely understand and relate to that.  I've used plenty of free software that has been lightyears better than similar proprietary products.  Of course I've also used proprietary products that I'm still desparately searching for a good FOSS replacement for, but that is another discussion altogether.

I do have a counter-point for you though.  Many companies expect their students to have even a little experience out of the classroom with products such as SAS and SPSS.  Its frustrating, especially for someone who is a strong advocate for FOSS such as you, myself, and many other people on this list, but its a fact of life.  On the flipside, its always good to know cheap alternatives, but I know from personal experience that some companies equate free or low cost with low quality.

Simply put the mentality is frustrating but its very common in the business world with large corporations.  Especially with something like R which is better than most of the proprietary products out there (I use it on a regular basis myself).

-Adam