On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 5:29 PM, James Sissel <jimsissel@yahoo.com> wrote:
And companies like to have a good company to support
the OS which gives them someone to sue if things go
bad.

#include <ianal.h>
But there wouldn't be any grounds to sue a support company "if things go bad", because support contracts aren't written in a way that exposes the support company to any liability for "bad things".  The contracts require that the support company "respond" to problems within certain time limits, but they cannot guarantee that that response will result in the resolution of the problem to the satisfaction of the customer.

And that's because it isn't possible to make such a guarantee.  MS doesn't guarantee it to their customers, nor does any other proprietary software company, and neither do Red Hat, SuSE, or Canonical.