Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Fri, 4 Apr 1997 06:04:32 -0500 (EST)
From:      Thomas David Rivers <ponds!rivers@dg-rtp.dg.com>
To:        ponds!etinc.com!dennis, ponds!uriah.heep.sax.de!joerg_wunsch, ponds!haldjas.folklore.ee!narvi
Cc:        ponds!FreeBSD.ORG!hackers
Subject:   pay-for support? (was: Re: Does de driver do 100MBIT Full Duplex?)
Message-ID:  <199704041104.GAA10560@lakes.water.net>

next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
dennis <dg-rtp!etinc.com!dennis@ponds.water.net> writes:
> 
> At 09:10 AM 4/3/97 -0500, dennis wrote:
> >At 10:23 AM 4/3/97 +0300, Narvi wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>On Wed, 2 Apr 1997, J Wunsch wrote:
> >>
> >>> As dennis wrote:
> >>> 
> >>> > Is the driver that you send me directly for 2.1.7 (that worked
> >>> > beautifully) in 2.2.1R? If not, WHY NOT!
> >>> 
> >>> No need to shout.  We aren't deaf exactly.
> >>> 
> >>> Since Matt released it _after_ 2.2 has been cut.  I've got a very
> >>> explicit message from Matt when i've been asking him earlier (right in
> >>> time to get something into 2.2 still) about a new version, that he
> >>> considered the stuff that sneaked into NetBSD by that time too buggy
> >>> to see it officially in FreeBSD.  That's why we've been integrating
> >>> the little hack still to make at least the DE21140A supported.  We
> >>> originally deferred the inclusion of this patch in anticipation of the
> >>> new driver version.
> 
> It seems to me, that the fact that the most popular driver for FreeBSD
> doesn't work is a sufficient condition to hold up the release until it
> does.
> 
> What you have now is a release that was supposed to be a "great
> saviour" feature-wise that is fundamentally unusable in its released
> form for a large number of users.....
> 
> Dennis
> 

 Hmmm... why do you say that's the most popular driver.  Out of the
all of the machines I can physically touch, only one of them uses
that driver.

 I'd say the most popular driver was the syscons one :-)

 For my purposes, second to syscons is aha2940, which coincidently, suffers 
a little as well.

 This begs a question I've been considering for some time.  Just
how much would you be willing to pay for a release that was supported
on your hardware?  Would you accept purchasing the hardware from
a vendor that "guaranteed" (in some sense) that FreeBSD worked,
and provided FreeBSD updates as necessary?

 If that's true; what's the limit you'd put on that.  Certainly
a million dollars (US) is too great; but would you go for, say,
a few hundred above what Gateway is selling equivalent hardware?

 Or, would a better model be the way Red Hat is selling Linux;
less that $50 a user; with phone technical support?

 [I figure, since I live in the same county as Red Hat, and could
maybe even steal some of their technical support people :-), I could
possibly start up this business...]

	- Dave Rivers -




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199704041104.GAA10560>