Software support must evolve with Open Source

Recently at the company I’m consulting for I was asked about ’support’ options for Apache. Keeping in mind, they already have support for the hardware and support for the Linux distribution, they still think they need another support channel for Apache. To me this a big waste of money and have somewhat made my case to them. While I understand their position that this support is a way to cover themselves if Apache ‘breaks’, the fact that this software is Open Source has to change the way they have traditionally considered support.