Agreed. Take long term ownership. Don't farm this out. There are some companies out there that provide support and consulting on open source projects. Rather

Agreed. Take long term ownership. Don't farm this out. There are some companies out there that provide support and consulting on open source projects. Rather than look for a freelancer to build an in-house application, find someone that can help you capitalize on tools that already exist. My company does exactly this. We build and maintain an open source project (SpiffWorkflow, for process automation) and help our clients build internal skills to deploy it and use it. No license fees or SAAS lockin - and no team of developers that walk out the door when things get difficult.