Deepak has a interesting blogentry about Open Source software. One of the things he says made me think. If supplying support is the moneymaking business of the future, why would any commercial company deliver good (as in bug-free) software, or even pro-actively solve problems before they bite the customers?
In my opinion I think it’s best to ask a reasonable price for your software, and have some sort of support-agreement/subscription system. Like, you get 90-days of installation support, and 5 free supporttickets. The way SuSE does it: the no-support version is cheap, and the more support you want/need, the more expensive it gets. But basically it is the same version of the software you get.
Another thing: use free available software (freeware, opensource, whatever) if the level of support (you can get/you can provide) is in line with the business-needs where it used. Go for vendors that give you 24/7 support in business-critical situations. Use common sense. That sounds like a stupid advice, but you all know a manager to whom this advice applies to!