One of the key obstacles for acceptance of Open Source Software (OSS) — like Linux, Open Office, and many of the other 93,000+ OSS projects displayed on the OSS site SourceForge — has been the lack of support for this software.

I.T. leaders have told me things in the past like, “So what am I gonna do if I adopt an OSS application, operating system or application server and I have a problem with it. Send an email to the ‘community’? I’ve got to have a vendor to lean on.”

Today there’s an acceleration in companies (such as IBM & HP) supporting either an open source stack (web, application servers; database, etc.). In addition, Ray Lane (former #2 at Oracle) along with Kim Polese (former CEO of Marimba) have started a new company called SpikeSource to support the whole enchilada (the entire OSS stack).

So if you’re a company that’s chosen any OSS offering, now there’s a place to turn to for technical and user support. This is a big deal on the way to OSS acceptance. It’s going to get more interesting going forward.