WikiSuite is the most comprehensive and integrated Free Libre Open Source enterprise software suite ever developed, so you'd expect that it took a massive amount of work. But how much? As of 2019, WikiSuite's cost to develop is well over 50 million $USD.
Yes. If you tried to re-code WikiSuite using proprietary models.
Below are the reports for various WikiSuite components. Here is one example: https://www.openhub.net/p/tikiwiki/estimated_cost
More info:
Like Wikipedia, GNU/Linux and Firefox, WikiSuite is the result of massive collaboration.
Nope. Just the Linux Kernel would cost billions to redevelop
The WikiSuite-specific code (mostly ClearOS installers):
This is intentionally as small as possible since we focus on upstreaming code to the various Software Components
We won't count KVM as we consider it as part of GNU/Linux
The Tiki-specific code is at approximately $15M. But that doesn't even count the 125 external dependencies. Think about it. Each dependency represents a distinct community / code base / bug tracker / etc.
There is tiny feature overlap / code duplication in WikiSuite because our philosophy is to avoid it as per Component criteria. While it's true that some of WikiSuite have apps or plugins, it's mostly a deployment mechanism, and there is no mess like explained at: http://pluginproblems.com/
That is true of all feature-rich software. But the economics don't make it feasible to build software just for your needs. Community Free / Libre / Open Source software will necessarily want to cater to a wider community and get more users and contributors.
Most of the software components are 10 to 15 years old so they are mature. Maintaining apps, even with the occasional revamps, is a tiny fraction of the effort of re-writing. And now, each of the has a community / ecosystem which uses and makes sure to maintain and develop.
Even if we exclude dependencies (which is debatable), and not count all the components, we can see that it's "well over 50 million $USD". This demonstrates the following: