[Web4lib] Open source support models

[Cary Gordon]

We not only offer commercial support for a FOSS products -- Drupal and  
related tools -- but we consume it as well. We use the supported  
version of Xen Virtualization platform. This has allowed us to get up  
and running with a mission critical system that has a pretty steep  
learning curve. It also provided a very nice non-OSS management tool.

We did the same thing when we started offering hosted Linux solutions.  
Although we had experience with Unix platforms like Solaris, DecOS,  
and had worked in-house with a range of Linux distributions, we bought  
the RedHat Enterprise Linux platform, so that we could get access to  
their update and support systems. As we got more comfortable with that  
platform, we moved to RHEL's free cousin, CentOS.

Cary Gordon, MLS
The Cherry Hill Company
http://www.chillco.com




On Jul 10, 2008, at 4:40 AM, John Fereira wrote:

> There are actually very compelling arguments for using OSS at the  
> library or enterprise level. I know of several other companies that  
> not only provide support, development, migration, but also training  
> on enterprise level open source software.
>
> In fact, as part of the development team on a couple of open source  
> software products that appeared to have quite a few institutions  
> chomping at the bit to be release so that the could start using them  
> during one of our collaborative development meeting we joked about  
> quiting our jobs once the products were released and forming a  
> company to provide support and training for the products.
>
> Let's face it, very few good software applications (OSS or  
> commercial) integrate into the enterprise out of the box. There  
> always is some amount of custom configuration, customization, and  
> possibly even development that needs to be done to get it into  
> production.  Then there is training and maintenance to be considered.