When I read the post, I dismissed it as a complaint that someone on the internet was wrong. [0] But then it struck me after reading here that perhaps the (abs

When I read the post, I dismissed it as a complaint that someone on the internet was wrong. [0] But then it struck me after reading here that perhaps the (absolutely correct) complaints about open source software coming with no guarantee of support whatsoever misses something open source does come with that I consider far more important - the absolute right of repair. I can't count the number of times I've gone down some rabbit hole with proprietary software and found myself without a clue, without documentation and been expressly prevented from bypassing that by a prohibition on reverse engineering in the licence. It leaves me with at best two options: ask the vendor's help (which inevitably requires me to leave the cheque book open until the solution is found at bleed at a rate determined by the vendor), or walk away from the software. At worst, the vendor has gone broke, so there is only one option. It's a pretty ugly position to be in. If I don't like the support on offer from open source authors then it's open source after all, so I can look at it myself or pay someone else to look at it for me. Hell, there are even companies out there that compete to sell me support, companies like Red Hat and Ubuntu. [0] All open source licences I'm familiar with say the software comes with no support whatsoever. Naturally there will be people who politely ask you to support it anyway, and sadly as you've exposed yourself to billions on the internet there will be a small minority who attempt to connive, guilt trip or bully you. I'm not sure what the best way to handle that is, but console yourself there is a worse outcome than having to deal with the occasional arsehole - and that is no one cares enough about your software to complain.