Customer support are the people who know which words in the software should change to confuse customers less. When I say "copy change" I mean changing some words in the software. The barrier to entry I'm talking about is the one preventing that support person from making that change, instead of having to ask their boss to ask one of the engineering bosses to ask one of the engineers to do it.
Okay, but if you lift that barrier there is still a major fundamental problem: the people in customer support don't know how to code. The few people in customer support I've known who knew how to code changed jobs on fairly short order.
The fact is, even in the bazaar model where the barrier is low, when does customer support make code changes? I'm talking here about instances where customer support for open-source projects exists.
