I believe the "home" version used to run at around €250. It's actually not that easy to find end-user prices, but what I found puts the entry level version at €900.

For me that's not cheap. It's more expensive than buying dedicated hardware (e.g. Buffalo Terastion) which *includes* the functionality. Of course the open-e software is likely to perform better, but since I plan to run this on older or low-power hardware at home, power saving features may be more important than sustaining 50.ooo IOPS.

I don't need support in the sense of installation help.
I don't need upgrades or fixes if the system is robust and stable in the first place.
However, I need to be able to trust a filer or iSCSI target, that any data I've put there, I'll be able to recover as long as the hardware isn't broken. That's why RAID functionality and the ability to replace every bit of hardware (not necessarily with exactly the same hardware, because commodity PC parts have a very short product cycle and replacements may be impossible to obtain) is absolutely mandatory. And it has to work even if there is currently no internet connectivity.

Given the current limitations of the DSS-Lite version I just don't see how anyone could use it for anything but DEMO purposes. But then it should be called DEMO not FREE. Calling FREE Edition is simply misleading. FREE implies a gift, but even gifts have value. If a gift self destructs or a gift leads you to put trust where it doesn't belong, it actually become s a trojan: "Quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentis!"