I'm waiting to see if the United Linux effort creates something greater
than the players involved and can be supported by any/all involved.
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| | ken.schweiker@FAA|
| | .GOV |
| | Sent by: Linux on|
| | 390 Port |
| | <[EMAIL PROTECTED]|
| | IST.EDU> |
| | |
| | |
| | 08/29/2002 12:01 |
| | PM |
| | Please respond to|
| | Linux on 390 Port|
| | |
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| To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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| cc:
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| Subject: support
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I was recently investigating production level support services available
for a linux distribution and as a result now wonder how the key players are
going to resolve pricing and support issues.
IBM offers Linux software support.
Linux distributors offer a 'distribution' AND include software
support.
So, currently (correct me if i am wrong), if a user wanted IBM support he
would purchase that on top of the cost of a distribution, which is already
packaged with support , thus doubling his costs. Why would anyone want to
do this? At these prices?
Anyone in the mainframe (now enterprise server) arena knows about the
worldclass software support IBM has provided (other vendors are included
here), however, there seems to be something wrong with this model.
One unnamed vendor told me IBM would not be able to call them for
assistance, with their distribution, if I bought support
from IBM. So why doesn't IBM just release their own distribution , so I can
have the service from IBM and also distribution upgrades? Would this be a
good thing?
Alternatively, Redhat, SuSE,Turbo,Debian could seperate software support
from distribution costs.
I can't remember a software vendor ever doing this but in the past we were
talking about propriatary code not open source. Many of my users would have
a preference for one of these distributions. Would this be a bad?
Personally, I would -not- like to see IBM become a Linux distributor but
that may be a more productive option. Has
anyone other opinions on how this should play out in the future in the
best interest of the end user?
