Recently I was reading an article related to Anaconda in Python and it said that commercial support is available in Anaconda.
I have searched online but was not able to find a perfect answer.
What does it mean by commercial support and is it compulsory for any open-source project to have commercial support?
Should we have to pay for such commercial support?
Please ignore if it looks like a naive question, because I don't have much knowledge about business terms.
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Commercial support is support offered on a business basis, to meet business needs.
Commercial support is not compulsory, and indeed many (I'd say most) open source projects do not advertise this.
On the other hand, if the writer of the software (or skilled contributors) would like to make money doing what they are great at, and people want to pay them, its a win-win. (Many businesses want commercial support to mitigate their risk, and often the cost of getting an expert is cheap in the overall picture to the business, and having expert support can help meet commitments.)
Conversely many open source projects are a labour of love/scratching an itch/giving back, and the authors dont want to offer help because its not what they do - plenty of projects thrive on a supportive community but not commercial support.
Commercial support can include paid training, installation services, non-open-source accessories or add-ons, consulting, and so on. Although the open source project itself may be free, some users - usually companies or larger organizations - may be willing to pay for the convenience and expertise included in these extra services and tools.
The availability of these for-pay commercial services doesn't normally affect the open-source user from getting and using the basic software without paying for it.
In some cases, the commercial support organization's web site - let's call it "XYZOpenSource.com" - shows up first in search results, before "XYZOpenSource.org". It can sometimes take a minute to find the underlying open source project.
What does it mean by commercial support and is it compulsory for any open-source project to have commercial support?
No, obviously not. An open source project may be a fifty line python script you wrote to solve your own problem, that you publish for others to use. No support included; just the right to use it.
Should we have to pay for such commercial support?
If you want it, you'll have to pay for it. There's no such thing as a free lunch. Someone offers to dedicate time to assist you using a specific software, in exchange for money.
If you don't need it, don't pay for it. You can employ someone, to read the source and provide the support in house if you want.
Commercial support is commonly used to support development costs, such as with MariaDB, or an integral part of the product, as with Red Hat.
A business may be reluctant to use open source software due to a perceived lack of reliable support for:
On the other hand, using that open source software may offer the potential of huge savings compared to a full commercial package or writing their own equivalent from scratch.
Commercial support can provide the best of both worlds. A paid source for updates, documentation/training, bug fixes (at a much higher priority than simply waiting on volunteer developers) and customization (particularly if the business does not have developers to do it themselves), but with a starting cost far below that of a full commercial package or writing a new system.
