Had an interesting response from Ben Johnston to my post below around the whole installation issues of BizTalk 2004 2004 2004. His point waqs that having spent a number of days getting all the hot fixes, service packs ect. together it didn't seem much different to the process the 'Free software' build would take. So I decided to let you in on my own trial. Build a VPC of BTS 2004 with all bells and whistles, do the same for 'LGOL'.
Result:
BTS build - 1 day
LGOL build - over 4 days and still having problems
Whilst fully agreeing with Ben that the hoops we jump through for BTS builds are many all the patches ect come from just one source! Further more advice is avaialble in bounds at just one place - Microsoft Support. With LGOL we have multiple suppliers to chase down for the correct fix/patch.
IMHO this is a much better way of working!