[EvanAnderson]

My experience mirrors yours.

I have never experienced frustration with free/open-source/source-available software like I have with proprietary software.

If I had a dollar for every damned time I was dealing with proprietary software and became frustrated that I just couldn't looked at the source code to figure out what the programmer meant... sigh

When I do contact support I end up taking to people who also don't have source code access. They might have better documentation and a more comprehensive knowledge base, but they're no more equipped to look at the code (and, arguably, probably less equipped to understand the code) than me.

Occasionally I find proprietary software whose accompanying documentation is sufficient to troubleshoot the really bizarre problems w/o source code access. Microsoft's protocol disclosures, created because of the EU anti-trust action, are a good example.

Having source code access and a modicum of reverse engineering and programming knowledge is a game changer for supporting software.