One the common concerns in using open source software at some companies is
having formal maintenance and support contracts. The crazy thing is that most
enterprise software products come with really bad maintenance and support at
high prices.
Take for example Premier support offered by most enterprise software vendors
that include claims of 4 hour response times and the like. If your goal is
having someone on the phone, then sure this works ok. However if you actually
want your problem solved, then get ready for a surprise. Most of the time you
are going to have to pull some pretty intense efforts to prove the issue is
the vendors problem. In most of these situations you end up doing all of the
leg work which often includes writing the fix or workaround. In many cases,
the vendor boils down to becoming a place for you to file bugs along with
their solutions so that you dont have to deal with in the next release.
Upgrades. Oh don’t get me started. Enterprise software vendors never sell
licenses on how easy it is to install or upgrade their software. In fact,
sometimes I wonder if they don’t intentionally make this process difficult in
order to require customers to buy more hours from consulting services.
Lastly, the enterprise product knowledge bases often require you to use the
vendors website using customer logins. This limits who has access and makes
searching and contributing to this content difficult if not impossible.
Open Source on the other hand has to have great maintenance and support
processes in order to gain any traction and acquire a user base. Wordpress is
a great example. The installation and upgrade process is as simple as it
gets. Searching for any problems or issues is as simple as searching the web.
Like many things in the world, the logical choice is not the first choice due
to tradition and fear. Just keep in mind times are changing, walls are
falling, and open source will set you free.