In <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
on 06/30/2008
at 02:17 PM, Timothy Sipples <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:
>All I'm saying is that *somebody* has to provide support, at whatever
>level the user wishes to pay.
And I'm saying that the level of that support is *not* determined by what
the user is willing to pay.
>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.
Why? If the community solves my problem, then from my perspective that's
what matters. If a vendor can't solve my problem faster than the community
can, why should I pay extra for vendor support?
>That's not what I mean by
>"support" in this context, although that's perhaps what you're implying.
Not at all; I'm talking about solutions that volunteers provide *after*
I've run into the problem. For some free software that support has been
better than the typical paid support.
Now, if you want to argue that the volunteers are not being compensated
for their time, that's a separate issue. But even there you could find
indirect compensations.
--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT
ISO position; see <http://patriot.net/~shmuel/resume/brief.html>
We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress.
(S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003)
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