sejo's rants

I often get asked (and so do other Inuits) why Open Source products have no support or where to find "support" for application X?

I'm going to give you an answer but first, humor me and let me describe a real life situation...

In Company X they use application Y as a data source solution because it is widely used and because there are a lot of companies that have certifications on Y. This makes the CEO feel good as he will always find people to support it. There are some minor disadvantages however, it is expensive and the cost to brand/adapt/improve is huge. Not to mention that the biggest knowledge stays external. Advantage is you do not have to search people to support it, they will be probably be kissing your .... the minute you bought it.

Now imagine that you choose application O (:p) that has no official support but you have the sources and you can hire people that can brand/adapt/improve but instead of giving support they teach your team how to work with application O and how to solve 90% of your problems/requests. This means you pay the initial fees for the implementation and training but not the yearly license and expensive initial buy-in. The remaining 10% can be filled up by hiring someone who will then teach your team again how to solve that problem in the future!

If you reach this paragraph and you still like to know why you need support for Open Source applications... start again and read in again!

It's not official support that is important it's the knowledge that is on the market about the product that is important!

update: about legal reasons you will find a followup soon!