Companies that choose to make their software open source usually make money off of selling support plans targeted to business users. A business can request assistance from the technical staff and even request custom features designed for their specific business that would not be included in a product.
However, the fact that you are not a programmer does not mean you can't use open source software. The software is available to download and install for free. In many cases, you can find open source versions of software available that rival the features and stability of expensive paid software. I used to use the open source LibreOffice instead of Microsoft Office. I found that LibreOffice's word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation programs worked just as well as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. (I stopped using it because its database program lacked much of the functionality that I needed, but it may have improved in the past two years.)
Because the code is freely available, you will find that security holes and bugs are able to be fixed much more quickly. Most software has a database for bug reporting available online, and anyone with programming knowledge can then locate the problem code and write a patch to fix it. There is a trade-off, though, since the code can be scoured by attackers looking for holes to exploit.
Before you spend money on software, I highly recommend looking for an open source alternative. In most cases, I have found that open source software features rival paid software features. As I discovered in my search for an alternative for Access, there will be times when you have to spend the money for the features you need, but open source software will limit the number of times you have to spend money for software.
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