The response that I usually see when a bug is raised in an open source project when someone asks for fix is "it's open source... so fix it yourself". That makes sense and seems like a reasonable "cost" for using the free software, but it's not that helpful all the time. Even if you fix it and submit a patch, that's no guarantee that the patch will be applied to source control in any reasonable time.
One of the maven plugins we use and had to patch (someone else supplied the patch) went without the patch being supplied for close to 2 years. It might be longer but I was (at the time) monitoring the mailing list and when they were going to cut a release I asked why the most voted for issue, with a patch, wasn't going into the release.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about open source. I'm just saying that it has some drawbacks when people are not working on it as their paid full time job.
Sometimes there are benefits to have a support contract for software. Yes, I know that you can get this with open source... It's just nice to be able to file a bug and not worry about solving it myself. To have someone who is familiar with the code fix it (as a committer) is a nice thing.
If this seems rambling I think that it just means that I need more coffee... oie.
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