What if TT and/or KK had been out of town that day?

Were they willing to offer any guarantees that their work actually fixed the problem?  Indemnify the customer that relied on their fix?  Offer a support contract for their work?

I'm sure relying on random support from random people might be nice for random people, but this little story does nothing for customers who need real, dedicated, and legally reliable support.  This is why RedHat still exists, for instance.

Your story is hardly convincing for anyone otherwise.  Nice try though.

"What if TT and/or KK had been out of town that day?" - then you could check out the source and possibly fix the bug yourself. Or at least you could see what went wrong and figure out a workaround.

When you are using closed source software you are STUCK, and completely at the mercy of your vendor.

jdn

If you need reliable support please contact me and we can discuss my rates.

Or you can purchase support from Castle Stronghold, which is a company started by the creators of Castle project.

Moreover, I wouldn't say it's relying on random people, because these are the actual commiters to the project. Not more random than in case of any company where people come and go.

With healthy OSS projects, there are usually quite a few active commiters, so even though me, or Tuna might have been AFK for a while, there are others who would help, so chance that an important issue would be ignored for a long time are really slim.

And if one 'story' is not enough, check this thread for example: groups.google.com/.../f3976006136de434

Well said Tim. My dislike for non-opensource software support is that not only do I have to pay a premium for the software itself, but then if I want support for it that often comes as an additional cost.  With Open Source, I usually have the option of not paying a dime up front, but if the system becomes mission critical, I can get a support contract and be covered.

@Krzysztof

I think you're missing the point.  Ayende has said much the same thing about 'commercial support' for NHibernate by offering his services.  You're both damn good, but neither of you is scalable (and I am aware of Castle).

Now, Microsoft offering support for JQuery, that's scalable.

@jdn

I think I know what you're hinting at.

Say, Microsoft and JQuery deal - you're about to make a commitment to a framework, so the fact that a big, respected (in some circles at least) company like Microsoft supports that framework, the *perception* of the quality is no doubt superior to some other framework with no such big company behind it.

The big company has a nice colorful website with kind words assuring you that whatever will happen - they got you covered, just don't be late with the money.

On the other hand the OSS projects offer you instead a link to their discussion forum.

Surely the first option must be much more appealing to the heights of CEO/CTO chair.

However I have dealt with such payed support from various companies, and from down to earth here,  it's a waste of money, for both the  company's product and its support.

Seriousely, while I admit there are companies out there that have enormously helpful support people who can help you deal with problems in a matter of minutes, the're rare - and generally speaking I can say that I can see no big difference between commercial support for a commercial software, and vibrant community around OSS project.

If we're talking about scaling - well, if there's a need, there soon will someone to satisfy that need. Hey, Ruby on Rails was a small inhouse framework once too! Now it's used widely and you can get support for it from a lot of companies/people.

Same here - if there is interest in a framework, it means it has big community around it ergo - lot of people who can help you with your problem (either directly, or indirectly by building body of knowledge in blogs, books, and history of already solved problems).

+1 for OSS!

I've pulled down numerous OSS sources and changed code or fixed code (mostly to suit my needs).  I've contributed back with patches where it made sense.

When you can do that at a late hour or on the weekend, it's totally awesome!

@Tim

I'm not sure that Scott Gu would say it was redundant at best and a marketing ploy at worst (I'm pretty sure he was a driving force behind it), but having Microsoft offer support solves the very real problem (which I've unfortunately experienced) of not being able to use JQuery in a large development environment because it was perceived as being 'non-supported.'

@Krzysztof

I certainly agree with you that sometimes the quality of support you get from the expensive support contract isn't quite as one would like (Compaq Silver Support, anybody?), and to be clear, I'm not dissing the quality that one can get through OSS communities.

But, to use again the example I mentioned, there are many reasons why Linux has expanded into the corporate environment, and two of them are named RedHat and IBM.

Whether that is a good thing or not is another question, of course.

@jdn

Two keywords: 'perception of risk' and the actual risk. You agreed with me that although you knew that the actual risk of using JQuery (in your case) was slim, whereas it's the false perception the decision makers had that it's otherwise influenced the final decision.

And I think that is the point of Tim's post - the perception is usually false.

@Krzysztof

Yes, but I question whether Tim's post would do anything to change that perception of the decision maker.s

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