"We really love Portland. This city has worked out really well for us." That's what O'Reilly & Associates chief executive and president Tim O'Reilly told me as he rushed between engagements at the O'Reilly Open Source Conference (OSCON) here in Portland, Oregon. The fact that almost 2,000 people made the pilgrimage to this corner of the United States and paid $1,100 to attend a relatively small event while big-name shows in more central locations and with virtually no admittance fees have been duds is testimony to the maturity of an ideology well beyond trend status. Eric Raymond, president of the Open Source Initiative, was comparing open source to cockroaches as he explained to my 13-year-old son the simplicity of open source, why it has caught on with such rabid intensity, and why the buzz was undeniably vibrant here at OSCON '03. "Cockroaches like dark places where no one can find them," said Raymond, widely regarded as the father of the open-source movement. "Commercial software is full of dark places that only a few people are allowed to venture into. As it turns out, commercial software is full of bugs and security problems because these cockroaches are hiding in these dark places that rarely get visited. Open-source software, on the other hand, doesn't have any dark places for the bugs to hide. It's open for everyone in the world to come in and rout the bugs out. As a result, more and more organisations are beginning to realise that the quality of open-source software very often exceeds that of proprietary software." Most interesting to me is that Raymond didn't even mention the cost factor. After some prodding, Raymond acknowledged that the acquisition costs (free in many cases) as well as lower expected total cost of ownership make for a very compelling story when it comes to alternatives to proprietary software. "One of the reasons this conference has the buzz it does," continued Raymond, "Is that people will naturally gravitate towards alternatives with a lower long-term cost of ownership when money is tight -- especially if there are no compromises in quality when compared to the alternatives."