The thing about open source software is that it is generally subject to "Technical Darwinism" ... if there is fragility in the system, and people notice it, it will get fixed fairly quickly (especially if the application is popular).
The leaked internal memo from Steve Ballmer recognizes this, among other
reasons, that the Open Source approach to development and maintenance
yields better net results than the closed methods, but they're stuc with
their revenue model, and they grew too dependent on it.
You can see that in the fact that in programmer-friendly
(tech-installation suggested) and the more stable utility and
applications arena, open source products are gaining ground. Like the
newcomer PHP taking a third of Web servers on the Net (according to one
source) as a stable platform upon which to build, and Linux ubiquitous
in that space, Firefox taking more than 10 to 20 percent of browsers on
the Net despite IE already on the machine, Thunderbird the email client,
and OpenOffice cutting down MS Office space (weak pun intended),
Google's innovation streak.
This is especially true when you use software for purposes other than that
which it was originally intended (which certainly describes just about every
business system I've ever seen). Since your particular problem may be
unique to your company, you may not get the fast response time that a more
popular fix might get, and frankly you have no recourse at that point other
than fixing it yourself. Here Darwinism actually plays against you.
But that's an even-steven trade between the two models. The company that
uses the whole box as is without customization is as rare as a
rainforest on the moon. But midrangers generally get support backing
anyway...
--Alan
