CRMDaily.com: Latest Open-Source Revolution: Tech Support

"Historically, proprietary-software companies have maintained much more highly developed customer-support infrastructures than open-source software firms. Providing a user purchased the right contract, tech help would be just a phone call away.

"The best that open-source software could offer, on the other hand, was uncertainty. If a large enterprise were to migrate to Linux in 1998, for example, could it rely upon one of the small open-source vendors to keep it up and running?

"But that situation has radically changed. As open-source software and the companies that sell it have matured, vendor support has come a long way. The operative question for the software industry now is this: Has the open-source community leveled the tech-support playing field...?"

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• Wired: Computing Made Good, Easy(Sep 16, 2001)
• Linux.com: A Linux Success Story(Apr 14, 2001)