At least if a company buys the latest Microsoft product it is obvious where to turn when problems occur. But having the source code open will not let a corporation sleep easier, mainly because few people understand code, and fewer still have the time to go through it. Russian roulette With the open source community often releasing drivers and patches developed independently, installing anything can be a bit like playing Russian roulette. With no guarantee of what's going on, companies have a right to be worried about installing any software. This is something that Cross fully identifies with.
Companies require a certain level of software certification before being willing to install.
This is something that Tenwick realises. With Red Hat, any package that is installed carries a digital certificate that says when the code was developed, and which version it is. It is clear that pure open source is not the way forward for most large organisations. The open source community, good as it can be, is only interested in developing software that interests it. It doesn't want to generate software that supports the needs of the enterprise.