[HLUG] Linux and comercial support

[Andrew Hodgson]

Hi,

What are people's experiences on this list of mid sized companies going with Linux alternative products, but finding the support costs prohibitively high, especially if you have a Microsoft support aggreement which covers a whole raft of products in one swoop?

For example, we were recently quoted figures of over £15,000 per year for SQL support with a clustered SQL instance.  This could be a fantastic opertunity for us to put real money into the open source comunity, and also give us real advantages, but we will be a lot better off cash wize on the Microsoft offering!

Are we doing something fundamentally wrong, should we go with GPL code and not get the support, or are there other options?

Thanks.
Andrew.