Man , what a winding thread. I think the bottom line is their should be more flexibility in support options. The problem with this is everyone always try to fit square pegs into round holes. Say I purchase 10 ES licenses, and I make 1 tech support call in year, I then become a gravy train. Another person purchases 1 license and makes 10 tech support calls, this would be a losing proposition. Ultimately in the real world every shop is unique and some need more hand holding than others. The real problem is that it is impossible for any vendor to have the perfect fit for everyone. My past experiences have taught me that we the users are the ultimate QA. We the users must be treated as such. I have over the years been able to get some flexibility with various maintenance agreements from various vendors. From my perspective I want to pay for support, that is what keeps a vendor in revenue and in business. But I also don't want to be left with a totally inflexible maintenance agreement either. Ultimately it is the sales team that make a company go, the sales team has to be the ones to provide the right type of support for "their" customer. If they have no incentive other than to make their number, you will always end up with poop, and they will have no incentive other that to sell you what you really don't need. This is more profound in publicly traded companies that have share holders to answer to than in privately held ones. Now to end this wind storm, with what is going on today, if you stick with IBM or HP/Compaq hardware, they both will provide you with decent support for Redhat just based on the hardware purchase, I am talking server class here, not desktops. If you have something on a mission critical box, than 600$ or even 1K$ a year is chump change in the big picture. Since the salesman won't provide what you need, the best recourse is to take them out of the loop, when the profits derived from maintenance go down, they will either adapt or go by the way side. That is how a free market economy should work. Ted On Sat, 2003-11-01 at 02:20, Mike A. Harris wrote: > On Fri, 31 Oct 2003, Ernest L. Williams Jr. wrote: > > >I am all for RHEL. I think it is an awesome thing. > >This is because I want to see big software vendors provide software for > >LINUX: > > > >Examples--- > >WindRiver (vxWorks) > >Big CAD/CAM companies > >MathCAD from the MathWorks > > > > > >The only thing that RedHat should not forget is that the reason SUN > >Micro made their OS distribution free (binaries that is) was due to > >distros like Red Hat Linux. Good Job. Red Hat should distribute the > >binaries and SRPMS for free and only charge for support!! > >Don't make us pay for your binaries. I don't mind paying for support. > > If you pay for support however, then you're getting the binaries > already, so the point is kindof moot.
