I am perceiving a trend that says you should pursue software appliances whenever you are extensively using open source as it provides a method to avoiding your customers ask how it was developed.
If a customer sees that you are charging them a lot of money yet used lots of free open source then they will want to negotiate more deeply than if they cannot peak inside the box at all.
Is anyone else observing this same trend?
I don't get it... Surely your customers don't want to unnecessarily pay for the licences of commercial alternatives of those open source tools. The simple fact that you've used those tools made the product much cheaper. If you used commercial tools, that would mean a higher fee. It's simple as that.
The fact that you are using open source could potentially be a very strong selling point of your services.
If you are using free software and charging your customer as if you were using commercially licensed tools, then you are not operating your business honestly IMO.
I seem to recall at least one case where a manufacturer used tweaked OSS as the base for their appliance. When it was discovered and they were pressed for the source code they demurred. Court action follow and a settlement was eventually reached.
Presumably they wanted to sell a "value added" product without having to give the goodies to their competitors.
::searches the web::
More than one case:
It would appear that busybox is all that and a bag of chips...
Anyway, all this suggests that anyone thinking of trying to hide the use of OSS in a software appliance might want to think twice. If those dirty hippie hacker types could bring Verizon to the settlement table they can bring you, too.
A lot of proprietary BSD-based systems would, when they booted, print screenfuls of microscopic BSD licensing clauses. I never heard anybody complain, or suggest that Unix should be cheaper because of these.
I've never seen the trend you mention, either. (What's next, paying less because you used a high-level language?) Get your sales people to sell them on how the software helps them. I don't see how the negotiation changes, unless they're willing to build it (and design and support it) themselves; your software still provides that much value to them.