6.2 Support

``Who are you going to call?'' is another FUD element. On the surface, this concern has some merits. Afterall, all open source projects have the ``no warranty'' claim.

In reality, many open source projects are well supported by user and developer communities. Because the source code is available for anyone to review, developers and non-contributing programmers can figure out how to use a feature of an open source program.

At the same time, because open source programs have no cost, the user base can be quite large. A large user base means more tutorials and user's guides are written by experience users.

Last, but not least, many open source projects also host online forums, where users and developers have a centralized meeting place to exchange ideas, questions, answers and suggestions. With advanced search engines, it is often quite simple to find help for a particular question.

What if a bug is found, or new features need to be added? With proprietary programs, the publisher determines when to add features, when to fix bugs and when to release the next version. With open source projects, there are many possibilities.

First, requests can be sent to the core development team of a project. If a request will benefit many other users, it probably will be implemented. Open source projects such as Moodle (http://www.moodle.org) has a active and responsive development team.

Second, if a programmer wants to add a new feature to an open source program, he/she can do so!

Third, if a commerical entity wants to fix a bug, or add a feature, it can always contract out to third party developers. Because the source code is open, all developers are ``equal'', and the client can get a fair price for any work done.