A tangential matter, where community-driven support may not hurt you, but providing your own support gives an advantage: If you're dealing with all the issues a

A tangential matter, where community-driven support may not hurt you, but providing your own support gives an advantage: If you're dealing with all the issues as they come in, you get a good feeling for how people are using your product, how they expect/wish it would work, and how they're mis-using and breaking it. I think of it as similar to top-quality brands that offer lifetime warantees (MEC in Canada, similar to REI, offers it on everything in their store). This way, if anything ever breaks out in the real world, the customer is likely to bring it back. While they are fixing it, they can examine it, and if they see a rash of broken straps of a certain design, they know to beef up that strap on the next spin. That's all before the advantages of customer loyalty, building a brand image/voice, or whatever other reasons.