College Student needs some advice.

Hello! I have been using PHP for 3 years now and I would like to personally thank you and the PHP team for creating such an easy to use language! My name is Chad R. Smith and I am a college student at DeVry University majoring in Computer Engineering. My reason for writing is that I am supposed to write a research paper for my English class that is a persuasive essay. I wanted to pick a topic that would really make me learn something new and be hard for me to write. Therefore, I decided upon "Open Source products should be used as mainstream office applications." I did not expect to find so much information (both positive and negative) that I have found so far! However, this leads me to ask you the question: Why should Open Source be used as mainstream office products? I thought it would be great to have real quotes from the people who work and involve themselves everyday in the Open Source application world. Do not get me wrong I fully believe in Open Source, and the powers that it has to be changed and distributed. However, I cannot just use my own thoughts on this one. What I would really like is just a message back stating what reasons businesses have to go with an Open Source package opposed to a commercial software package? I would enjoy hearing what the PHP Webmasters have to say and I look forward to reading your reply. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day! Chad R. Smith