> What seems to be perpetually missing from the FOSS philosophy, especially among people who love tinkering with Linux (note: I am one of them), is a valuation of time.
This is perpetually missing from SaaS evaluation as well. You have to setup AD integration, you have to learn how to administer it, you have to learn how to export your data and what to do with it in case the company disappears, you have to setup internal support and they have to be the expensive kind of support who can debug things when the SaaS provider changes things without notice, you have to have your admins setup multiple browsers because they decided not to support IE like the rest of the company, etc.
This is perpetually missing from SaaS evaluation as well. You have to setup AD integration, you have to learn how to administer it, you have to learn how to export your data and what to do with it in case the company disappears, you have to setup internal support and they have to be the expensive kind of support who can debug things when the SaaS provider changes things without notice, you have to have your admins setup multiple browsers because they decided not to support IE like the rest of the company, etc.
The seat charge isn't the only cost of SaaS.