This article is about the use of Open Source software (primarily Linux) in the Enterprise. It has some good absolutely valid points about the lack of enterprise monitoring tools and scalability of Linux. But when it comes to the support issue, I just had to comment:
"There are different reasons why people advocate open source. One reason for enterprise is, 'You have the source code; if it doesn't work, you can fix it.' But the fact is, if I'm an enterprise, I don't want to fix it. I want somebody else to fix it," Goldman said.
"Who are you going to call when it doesn't work?" he asked. [NewsFactor]
Most companies who sell highend appservers etc. have very expensive support contracts that they virtually require you to take out. With an exception of a few companies, it is my belief that these contracts are useless. Over the last 6 years, I have on almost every occasion known more than the support guy on the other end, because whoever developed the part that's causing an issue left 7 months ago.
We will use good commercial packages when the budget is there for it and if required by architecture boards. But in many areas the opensource varieties are better written, better supported and fixable when who ever wrote the original code disappeared off the face of the planet. Serveral of my clients have paid $50k annual support contracts for nothing but frustration.
Just look at Apache. IBM and Oracle stopped developing their own webservers and now ship Apache as standard with their appservers. Apache Tomcat has virtually become a defacto standard for small to midsize JSP/Servlet apps in banks and JBoss is starting to do the same for EJBs. Offering a complete J2EE Appserver in an opensource package.
The moral? Just because a software package is Commercial, doesn't mean the support is any good.
12:55:43 AM  comment []
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