1.3 Challenges to be considered

However, there are also challenges which must be considered:

• Cost: Open Source software is not free of charge. Especially in enterprise environments, additional features or pre-configurations may incur licensing costs. These costs can be comparable to those of proprietary software.
• Employee Know-How The city of Vienna’s IT department manages various systems, often relying on enterprise support for Open Source software due to limited in-house expertise, which results in additional costs.
• Limited community size: Software projects supported by small communities may face the possibility of limited development and insufficient security updates. It is important to weigh this risk during the software selection process, much like assessing a vendor when evaluating licensed solutions.