When large companies and the public sector evaluate free software and proprietary software, the illusion that someone quality assures the software, disappear.

In order for functionality, security, stability and scalability to meet the company's quality demands, the company needs to take responsibility for the quality assurance.

A good framework exists for quality assuring the delivery, system administration and support of IT services. That framework is called ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library). ITIL gives you a good foundation for using free software and make sure that it reaches the company's quality goals. In 2005, ITIL was formalized as the standard ISO 20000.

For many companies, it will not be possible to make a strategic decision about using free software without having a quality system like ITIL.