In my experience the reason some companies will purchase software is the support.. not because they think they sue or blame them.. but because they can open support and trouble tickets with them and get problems resolved.

It usually gets in people like me's way, actually. Damn near every time my companies have made me open a ticket with the vendor I've figured out and solved the problem long before they even got through their initial 10 question check list .

So thats really what companies are after, support. You can't really sell a "forum" to your company and have CEO's go "Oh.. ok.. sure."

BUT not every company is stupid. Some realize the quality of SA's you hire is significantly more important than the amount of money you throw at some other company to pickup your trash...

Anyone running IBM hardware on AIX. The IBM HTTP server is actually Apache. And so are several others. And if you now claim that none of your category of companies are using IBM+AIX... then.. well, I'll rest my case.

Oh, and the company I work for use Apache as web server. I guess we're of no importance then.

EDIT: Did read through the thread. YoDude summed it up best. I'll keep away from replying to OB's posts in the future - it's a waste of time.