Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2005 18:07:18 -0500 From: Paul Mather <paul@gromit.dlib.vt.edu> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Cc: Anthony Atkielski <atkielski.anthony@wanadoo.fr> Subject: Re: Instead of freebsd.com, why not... Message-ID: <1108249638.32574.49.camel@zappa.Chelsea-Ct.Org> In-Reply-To: <20050212203851.D694116A4D3@hub.freebsd.org> References: <20050212203851.D694116A4D3@hub.freebsd.org>
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On Sat, 12 Feb 2005 21:25:36 +0100, Anthony Atkielski
<atkielski.anthony@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
> Paul Mather writes:
>
> > As I said, that's why you'd contract with one of those outfits in
> the
> > "Vendors" section.
>
> If they can do the job. Since they didn't write the code, though, they
> aren't ultimately accountable for it.
I hate to burst your bubble, but neither is any other OS vendor
ultimately accountable for its code. By that, I mean you can file
"problem reports" or "trouble tickets" or whatever the phrase du jour
is, but the company is ultimately under no obligation to fix them.
(Also, if you read your license carefully, they don't guarantee the OS
will work, nor are you protected against it destroying your data.) Even
some critical reported bugs go unfixed for relatively long periods of
time. (This is not to suggest that problems don't get fixed, but merely
an illustration that when it comes down to it, you have no guarantees
with them, either.)
Just because a support/contracting company is not "ultimately
accountable" for code they didn't write does not mean they can't put
together a well-crafted solution that is known and tested to work within
given client parameters. (FreeBSD's general adherence to POLA helps
here.) MSCEs aren't "ultimately accountable" for Windows code, but they
get hired all the time to fix things and build solutions, right?
> > BTW, it is usually not realistic to expect an organisation to have
> "all
> > the expertise it needs to support those solutions in-house and on
> site."
>
> That depends on the size of the organization. I've encountered
> organizations that wrote their own operating systems.
<Sigh> Which would make them representative examples, I suppose (note my
use of the word "usually")...
And, with that statement, I'll confess that the laws of diminishing
returns threshold has now been reached for me in this thread and I'll
bid my farewell. The reason I posted in what is probably the biggest
bikeshed of the year was due to one of your pronouncements that it was
not possible to get professional "telephone support" when it comes to
FreeBSD. I pointed out it is. That's all. I'll leave it to the
various consultants that frequent the list(s) to argue the merits and
relative quality of the service they provide. :-)
Cheers,
Paul.
--
e-mail: paul@gromit.dlib.vt.edu
"Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production
deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid."
--- Frank Vincent Zappa
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