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Ask HN: Would your business pay for supported open source?

2 points by davman ↗ HN
Some larger open source projects run their own commercial support offerings, but smaller projects don't tend to have this.

Would there be any benefit to a 3rd party company stepping in and offering a paid support contract for a wide variety of open source projects?

I'm guessing that some open source authors don't want to get into the legal fuss around paid support, so I'm wondering if there is a market gap here.

5 comments

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[dead] mikece
When it comes to paying for support for software a CIO or tech manager is usually paying for “a throat to choke” in case something goes sideways. To them, Support is what covers their backside if someone screws up in-house and needs an ultimate subject matter expert to bail them out. This is why Red Hat charges Wondows Sever support rates for free software: because they promise to be there for the customer. There is also the perception that something is worth what you pay for it, which is why people continue to select Oracle over SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.
Finnucane
It probably wouldn't be worth very much. If, for example, I'm writing a python app and I import some package from pypi, if that package is relatively small, and I have some issue with it, I can probably just open the code files and figure it out. Support for open source projects usually means it's something large and complex and requiring specialized knowledge or at least beyond your own, or your project is so large and complex you need outside help getting it done. Also, suits willing to foot the bill.
davman
Thanks for the feedback :) I think I was more positioning this as "We have hundreds of open source dependencies, can I pay someone (x) to support these all in one go?", mostly due to the proliferation of npm packages!
dgwight
I’m building something along these lines. Rather than offering support contracts, I am aiming to make doing hourly paid remote support as easy as possible for open source devs.

As for businesses, Otechie is focused on startups, who often have more money than time/experience. For me personally, I have often spent days in frustration, when the right person could have helped me though quickly.

If you’re curious, here’s a link: https://otechie.com

davman
Can't see it unfortunately, I'm in the EU!