begin quoting Lan Barnes as of Wed, May 11, 2005 at 07:47:03AM -0700: [snip] > At the risk of jumping into something that I've been ignoring (in the > interests of time), both yours and Stewart's statements above strike me > as silly. Support is expensive. If a company doesn't organize to do it, > it has to be done by disorganized volunteers (like us), with attendant > risks that most IT managers find unacceptable.
This is why you pay money for software. > Even companies that sell licenses see support as a profit center. Yes. But is that good for the user? I don't think so. The problem with charging for support -- seeing support as a profit center -- is that the forces on the software push it towards NEEDING support. Making the software more stable, more reliable, more consistent ... runs counter to the bottom line. For _good_ software, you need to roll your support costs into the initial price. That way, you are *motivated* to make your software into something that doesn't need a support contract. > But maybe I'm missing irony again. Anemic, are ya? :) -Stewart "Why not ship UNIX w/o the manpages? Oh, wait, that's info." Stremler
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