Chemo, I can only agree with what you say, nothing for me to argue on. However, I believe there are businesses for which a guaranteed support directly from software vendor may be important - as a service for which the timeframe and quality is guaranteed by documented agreements etc. And, in general, as there are 3-5 most popular open source project in each category (you gave a good example), a choice of commercial solutions is much wider. And they're often developed more regularly - osCommerce is a good example of how long it took them to move from one major branch to another. Again, I don't mean you're wrong in any way - still, there wouldn't be any paid software without a reason people often choose it.
Agreed. For mission critical servers I always recommend RHEL versus centOS, LiteSpeed or Zeus webserver versus Apache, and Oracle versus MySQL. The reason is as you cited: guaranteed support and service level agreements (SLA's). In the world of eCommerce there are all flavors of startups. Some have proper capitalization and can afford a commercial application from the start whereas others operate thin and take advantage of FOSS applications at the cost of no SLA.
Hey guys, thanks for the replies, they are so helpful to know. I have finished doing my cms for my website, and now want to invest my time into ecommerce/online transaction. I have someone who wants a website with an online shop but man there is so much to choose from. I know how to use paypal, but I want to add a chart and make it customizable to my design. Do you have to pay a license for magneto, if I make it customizable to my client's or my design? Thanks.