On 20/09/13 23:04, Pirmin Braun wrote: + explain how this development was financed. Because either there were + non-paid just-for-fun programmers at work who may turn away at any time + or the professional services have to pay the bills.
In my experience, open source is much more supportable in the long term than proprietary software. Proprietary software tends to get end-of-lifed after three or four years, and, as only the supplier could maintain it, you are left without a paddle. If the vendor gets taken over, it can become unsupportable in months.
In some cases, commercial software is end-of-lifed, because a newer version is being marketed, which, on a suitably more powerful machine, will perform the same function, but it also happens because the market is no longer seen as profitable.
Whilst open source software may get declared end of life, you still have the source code, or at least you do if had the foresight to take a copy, so you can still get any competent programmer to maintain it for you.
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