>Why can't both proprietary software and open source software co-exist? Probably because it's impossible to have code that is both proprietary and open source

>Why can't both proprietary software and open source software co-exist? Probably because it's impossible to have code that is both proprietary and open source at the same time. Unfortunately the code is either public or it isn't, because of copyright law there's not really an in-between. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying your company should use any particular product, but you do have options of where you can put that money that you can exercise when it's most appropriate. None of those consultants seem to be as big as Mathworks though, which probably matters. >There are many other packages that cannot compete with anything open source - ANSYS Mechanical for example. It only takes one entrepreneur to get the ball rolling by releasing a serious open source competitor. The whole industry can build on top of it after that.