Free LIMS – An Oxymoron? Really

Who’s going to aid implementation?

Volunteer help from the LIMS' community, or its certified professionals. See John Joyce's work on FOSS evaluation

The author is correct re implementation costs, often double that of licensing, and the only saving with FOSS LIMS. It can be used by unlimited users, also sans DBMS or Operating System fees. Customisation, configuration, training, support and maintenance are the same

In FOSS, labs are free to customise themselves, not locked to vendors, and have full ownership with a free upgrade path. Much reduced risk

Less dependent on commercial services, hard-working labs are rewarded. IME, a 30% saving applies with everything delivered, but often see good really cheap installations by labs, cherry-picking the pro services they need

Whether there are any truly viable, full featured, open source LIMS available?

Speaking for myself 

OLiMS recently launched to fill the void

Built on Bika LIMS, not us, last progress report 15 Dec 2015. (Update. Not following Open Source principles, Olims failed miserably early 2016)

Pseudo-vendors utilizing the Free LIMS paradigm to make revenue?

If the author refers to Bika, we adhere to the Professional Open Source Software model yes.

Via services provided. Full featured, broad based, open source LIMS provider available today

Indeed

Lemoene, 19 July 2016