On 2020/07/13 14:20, Telesto wrote: >The potential customer has to figure out who to contact themselves. Sending >customers more or less in the dark.
I'll grant that the LibO webpage on obtaining professional, paid support, could be clearer. From my perspective, the biggest change to that page that needs to be made, is which organisations provide paid Tier 1 support to individuals. ideally, there would be a matrix: Column headings are: * Type of Support; * Tier 1; * Tier 2; * Tier 3; Row headings are: * Column Headings; * Individual; * Nano-business; * Micro-business; * Small business; * Medium business; * Large business; * SOHO; * SMB; * Enterprise; It probably would be useful for that page to provide definitions for each of those terms. > The quality of the content at Collaboraoffice.com/ CIB.de isn't really > convincing either, IMHO. And the sites are rather technical. Personally, I wouldn't call any of the documents on any of the vendor sites that I've looked at White Papers. (Comic Sans? Seriously? I've forgotten which vendor's White Paper used that font.) Part of the theory is that IT will be browsing the site, not the CEO. Typically, the recommendations of IT are accepted, if the budget is there. If the budget isn't there, either the proposal will be dropped, of somebody that the Board of Director knows, gets the contract, even when it costs twenty times as much, delivers less than a tenth of what IT requested, and none of the required specifications are met. > A CEO or Manager has to be convinced too, That usually occurs after a _Request for Quotation_, _Invitation to Tender_, or _Request for Proposal_, or similar document has been made. The theory is that the suspect will provide contact data to the support vendor, and the follow-up email/phone discussion will go through the wants/needs/requirements of the suspect, before the any of the above documents are issued. The requirements for the above document will list exactly what the support vendor said that they could supply, usually including some trivial thing that only that support vendor can supply. Once the document is in house, then the CEO _might_ go through, and approve/disapprove it. Sometimes, whatever the CEO, or whoever doesn't like, can be negotiated around. > Also terms like L1 and L2 are not to evident. Are those (legally) universal > terms. > So L1/L2 means exact the same thing for every software vendor worldwide? I probably was the one that brought up those terms. For all practical purposes L1 & L2 have the same meaning for every vendor who has anything to with language, writing systems, and the like, around the world. > So even with LTS we end up with multiple LTS version offered by multiple > vendors. Take a look at the current situation. I've forgotten which vendor offered support for which product. Vendor #1 Does one major release a year, offering five years of support for that release. All currently supported released have updates, when security flaws & bugs are found, and fixed. Typically, there are four minor releases, and one or two intermittent releases each year. Included in the contract, is software that enables rapid deployment of the updates throughout the organisation. IT has to authorise the update, and users are not impacted by it. This organisation specialists in integrating LibO with the existing software, and workflow processes used by the organisation. Vendor #2 does two releases per year, and offers three years of support for each release. Minor releases are done, when bugs are fixed, and security flaws patched. This vendor also provides tools to enable the organisation's IT people to deploy updates, when they (organisation IT) are satisfied that it won't break anything. Vendor # 3 does one major release every two years, offering somewhere between six and ten years of support. Minor releases tend to be security patches and bug fixes. Major releases introduce new functionality. Whilst it encourages organisations to migrate to newer versions, they will continue to support the product, for the lifetime of the initial contract. When renewing, you pretty much have to upgrade to the current version --- about the only exception is when their techs can't get the current version to work with whatever other ancient software the customer is using. All of these vendors call their product something along the lines of "VendorName Office". They all acknowledge LibreOffice as being their upstream. Vendor # 4 simply takes the current version of LibreOffice, and backports security fixes & bug fixes to it, for the duration of the LTS contract that they signed with the customer. If you started with LibO 5.0.0.0 back September 2015, and had a ten year contract, you'll be getting updates until 2025, but still on LibO 5.0.0.0.x, where "x" is however many patches & updates have been done since then.) AFAIK, this is the only LibO version that might cause confusion with individuals and organisations other than Vendor # 4. I doubt that any change made by TDF/LibO would add to the potential plethora of LTS versions, and duration of support. jonathon -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: [email protected] Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy
