Support in the OSS World

[Steve Richardson]

I blog on law office technology for the solo practitioner and small firm (lawtech.wordpress.com). I suspect that many businesses are hesitant to adopt Linux and OSS because of a perceived lack of support for the operating system and apps. I am currently researching a blog post on this, as I suspect that, contrary to this belief, there is plenty of support out there, and this false perception should not hold people back from adopting Linux. I see from Ubuntu's site that they do provide support plans, and OpenOffice.org refers people to a list of consulting firms by geographic area. What is the overall structure of product support in the OSS world? I would think my colleagues would rather hire a consultant than deal with support forums, but when does the cost of support for free (or much more reasonable priced) software exceed that of commercial Windows software and the support that "comes with"? I would appreciate your thoughts on this.

[Alex Turner]

Steve,

This is an interesting question. What I find really interesting is the basis of the question 'that support comes with non free software'.

I do not see this support. I, and my colleagues, spend huge amounts of time trawling through support forums and 'googling' to try and find the fixes for many many different problems in the non free world. We support other companies - for a fee - but we do not get any 'built in' support from MS and the rest of the paid for software world.

We also provide support for Linux installations in commercial situations. We get on support for that either. But there are forums and Google.

So - were is the difference?

The bottom line is that you can find paid for support for any software. But 'built in' support as part of paid for software is like Santa. Nice idea, but one day the illusion gets shattered.

Best wishes

AJ

[Steve Richardson]

AJ

Interesting point you make. Hadn't really thought about it, since I have been my own tech support for so long that I do not know what (if any) support is out there for paid commercial software. Perhaps that is part of the misconception I am researching, not only a belief that there is no support for OSS because there is often no company behind it (just a network of programmers), but that there is no real support for apps published by a company! Perhaps what you said is the answer:

"you can find paid for support for any software. But 'built in' support as part of paid for software is like Santa. Nice idea, but one day the illusion gets shattered."

Can I quote you on that? :-)

Steve

[Alex Turner]

Steve,

Naturally you can quote me - but thanks for asking.

Cheers

AJ