While the purpose behind open-source is to provide the public with a quality product at no cost while soliciting community involvement and continued growth for the product... I feel a little overwhelmed sometimes with the fact that there are so many 3rd party scripts, and many of the extensions that are commercial are not only retail with a continual subscription fee to get support, but the fact that many of us have several purchased options on our site and if you have to maintain support for more than a couple of extensions, you are most likely putting more money in then you are getting out.
My suggestion is for some guru out there
to figure out a way to get a spot in the extension directory to offer support for all of the extensions for one reasonable cost, subscription based is good... you know like 3 month, 6 month, 1 yr.
For example, if I have 5 3rd party extensions on my site and I only want to pay for the extension itself and not months and months of support on each extension, I can order an all inclusive support package, from Joe Schmo, who is savvy on all of the extensions, or at least proficient in scripting to help solve issues that I might have with any of these extensions.
There are enough people, it seems, around here that are pretty knowledgable on many, if not all of the extensions out there, and that person could make a mint, basically offering an all-inclusive support package.
I know there are people out there who offer support on hourly basis and that could get VERY spendy.. so this is just my thought, someone should *wink wink* give it a try! It sure would help make things less confusing.
While I'm at it, I don't think it is such a bad idea to also offer premium services such as business consulting, search engine ranking, other things to help boost a website's visibility.
There are some pheNOMinal money making opportunities for some of you know-it-alls around here... you really should start taking your talent live!
Remembering of course, which I think many of the developers out there have forgotten, that many of the people utilizing joomla and other open source scripts are looking for affordable options
Peace!
