Ask Slashdot: Troubling Trend For Open Source Company

An anonymous reader writes "I'm one of the original founders of an open source company which offers a popular open source product (millions of downloads) targeted primarily to small businesses. We have been doing this for 10 years now and we fund the development of the open source product with the usual paid support services, custom development and addons, but over the last few years, we've noticed a troubling trend. Companies that have downloaded our product from one of the many free download sites have a question they want answered, so they call our support line. Once we politely explain the situation and that telephone support has a reasonable fee associated with it, more and more of them are becoming seriously irate, to the point of yelling, accusing us of fraud and/or scamming them. For some reason, they think a free product should have free telephone support as well, and if we don't offer free telephone support then it's not really a free product. These same people are then resorting to social media in an attempt to 'spread the word' with the same false accusations, which is starting to take its toll on our reviews, ratings, and in turn our bottom line. Does the Slashdot community have any suggestions on how we can reverse this trend? How do other open source companies handle similar situations?"

Comments

Spoken like a true capitalist

[DNS-and-BIND]

Well, here we have yet another case of insular thinking from a capitalist who can only see her own side of the situation. It's like this, 1%-er: people download some free software that promises to solve their problems. The software is confusing and poorly laid out. They do what comes naturally: ask the company to stand behind their product. The company replies with a crafty, "pay us, we will only help you for $$$, this is the only language we understand, otherwise get lost and back to your hovel, peasant." The customer is then rightfully angry that such a bait-and-switch has been pulled. Do you get it now, Corporate Master?

Re:Give them a refund

[ShanghaiBill]

Unless they paid some money to someone, it's not clear why they would think they are entitled to support.

Are you serious? Our entire political system is based on conditioning people to believe that they are entitled to things they didn't pay for.