Differentiation Contd.

3. Portability
Its easy for OSS to be ported to other devices and platforms with relevant expertise from contributors as they make necessary modifications.
Whereas the PS vendor has expertise only in the current platform or device they are dealing in. They generally don’t give any thought to increase the portability until its heavily profitable for themselves.

4. Compatibility
As he contributory nature of OSS requires that the standards and specifications be kept open so that additions and/or modifications can easily be done.
On the other hand a business sense dictates that products from different PS be incompatible to each other and hence increasing the cost of trading into other PS and acting as an artificial competition barrier.

5. Impact of Negative Business Practices
OSS products can be supported by users having expertise in the required field whereas the PS can only be supported by the vendor hence giving it the power to perform negative strategies. Example, they can give the PS for free or very low cost in the beginning to ward off competition and then increase the cost later.

6. Response Time
Only a PS vendor can modify its PS code in case of any attack or to add any new feature in response to the public demand. Whereas OSS having a decentralized nature of development is continuously upgrade with new incremental features. Users can also upgrade and customize the software as per their requirements, themselves or with help of any knowledgeable person.