The convenience of proprietary software (from a purchasing angle)
One of the things that we open sourcerors need to figure out - or which the market needs to figure out - is the convenience of purchasing proprietary software. By this I don't mean any particular vendor's policies: I'm talking about the basic act of buying something that masquerades as property.
For better or (in my view) for worse, the industry knows how to buy proprietary software. Increasingly, thanks to the pull of Red Hat and Salesforce.com, it's getting used to subscription-based pricing, too.
As I re-discovered today on a call with a prospective customer, however, we still have a long way to go, because as an industry we don't really do a good job of quantifying the value of support. In the case of this prospect, as well as others with whom I meet, support gets low-man-on-the-totem-pole status when it comes to purchasing. They know there's value in it, and they even know that they need it (at least, initially), but given a choice they'll often skip it.
It's a question of "should do" versus "must do," and "must" will win quite a lot, even when it's more expensive than "should." Other times open source will win a user, but lose a customer, through no fault of the vendor or prospect. Purchasing priorities simply get in the way, priorities that open source really should be learning to steer in its direction.
All of which makes me much more sympathetic to those who have proprietary extensions as part of their licensing model. In many cases, I suspect this is done to facilitate the purchase of open-source software, rather than force the purchase of proprietary software.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
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I've said this many times before, there is little value in support. There is value in products. The fact you're hearing this from customers today is not a huge surprise. The software market (you know, the guys driving $200B in revenues yearly) have taught customers that products are of significant value, and on-going support and maintenance is of approximately 10-15% value of the original product license. You're trying to change decades worth of vendor "education"....Much harder than it sounds.
Also, great point on should vs. must....I should get more exercise...or so my wife says!