Shmuel Metz writes: >Oh, BTW, IBM uses free software, not just proprietary software.
Of course, and I don't think anyone was arguing to the contrary (as he types from a Linux client :-)). IBM also sells support services for myriad free software products. All I'm saying is that *somebody* has to provide support, at whatever level the user wishes to pay. In the case of my personal Linux client, I support myself and pay in the form of my time. (There's another Linux support option inside IBM that's much more popular, but it's the option I happened to choose.) It's a considerable amount of time, thus very real dollars. You have to be careful, though, not to mix this type of support with the normal community benefits that derive from using any piece of software exercised by at least two users. In the latter case, if somebody else discovers a bug before you do, and has enough incentive to fix the bug himself or hire somebody else to fix it, then you benefit assuming the fix drifts back into the mainline software version. That's not what I mean by "support" in this context, although that's perhaps what you're implying. - - - - - Timothy Sipples IBM Consulting Enterprise Software Architect Specializing in Software Architectures Related to System z Based in Tokyo, Serving IBM Japan and IBM Asia-Pacific E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
