On 10/14/2010 02:20 AM, Drew Jensen wrote: > But the problem discussed was not 1st and 2nd line support - it was on 3rd > and 4th level support.
For fourth level support, you pretty much have to have developers for the software in question. The virtue of FLOSS, is that you have source code, and if you have, or hire programmers, things that require 4th level support can be done in-house. The vice of FLOSS, is that since source code is available, nobody advertises the fact that fourth level support is available. Both of these factors also apply to third level support. > Yes we do great at supporting individual users and small business Maybe. For an individual, or SOHO that is willing to spend the time browsing the forums, reading the documentation, subscribing to the lists, that support is good. For the individual or SOHO that wants to pick up the phone, the difficulty in finding a usable phone number for an organization that provides paid support, implies that support is not good. Where things go really wrong, is when the individual is hit with the per incident charge. "You want how much per phone call?" It isn't that the charge is outrageous --- it is in line with what Microsoft charges. The issue is that consumers are not used to paying the same prices as corporations are, when it comes to software support. >the presentation was on supporting medium to large organizations. The vendors in that area have tended to provide support contracts only for their flavour of OOo, and not the "generic" program. One has to extensive digging into the OOo website, to find out that support contracts are available. Other than Sun, those companies are, for all practical purposes, not listed on the OOo website. > This is where, IMO, we need to focus some thought - how will the document > foundation grow this type support environment. +1 jonathon -- No human will see non-list, non-bulk, non-junk email sent to this address. It all gets forwarded to /dev/null -- E-mail to [email protected] for instructions on how to unsubscribe List archives are available at http://www.libreoffice.org/lists/marketing/ All messages you send to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
