Date: Sun, 13 Jul 1997 09:27:49 -0400 From: "Joel N. Weber II" <devnull@gnu.ai.mit.edu> To: bob@luke.pmr.com Cc: joelh@gnu.ai.mit.edu, davidn@labs.usn.blaze.net.au, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: My opinion about freebsd (fwd) Message-ID: <199707131327.JAA14007@ethanol.gnu.ai.mit.edu> In-Reply-To: <19970713114553.01088@pmr.com> (message from Bob Willcox on Sun, 13 Jul 1997 11:45:53 -0500)
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Date: Sun, 13 Jul 1997 11:45:53 -0500 From: Bob Willcox <bob@pmr.com> Reply-To: Bob Willcox <bob@luke.pmr.com> Hmm, this ignores the cost of support/service. Depending upon the level of support offered this can be an on-going expense that gets very expensive. Free software relies upon (mostly) free community support. Commercial software usually (in my experience) cannot. Vendor's generally either bundle it in the price of the software or charge separately for it. During my tenure at IBM working on AIX, we wrestled with this problem constantly. One of the principle factors that drove the development of the 4.1 release of AIX was that the 3.2.5 release was bundled with free support, and that the cost of that support was sky-rocketing (and becoming unaffordable). Since IBM's business practices folks would not let us change the terms and conditions of a point release of the OS (so that support could be separately charged for) we had to come out with a whole new release to do so. Support is expensive, period. More expensive than software development. Cygnus wants at least five developers, I think, at prices I would never be able to afford. I think Cyclic came up with a good scheme for reducing queries: if you buy support from them for a 25 person organization, there are only one or two of your people who Cyclic will talk to. Net result is that even if you buy support from Cyclic, a few of your own people are going to do much of the simple work. Support is also often rather meaningless; I've found, for example, that I'm much more competent than the tech support people at Compaq. And I'm no hardware expert. A month ago, I'd never even installed a SCSI drive on a machine... Anyway, IMHO many organizations promise support, but few of them actually come through. Nevertheless, orgainzations who don't understand the technology often have to have competent people. And if you have to deal with things yourself, you're much better off with free software, where you can hire any competent person to solve your problems, rather than being stuck with a potentially unhelpful vendor.
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199707131327.JAA14007>