The others have answered one part of your question, but I wanted to mention
another very significant part of the whole support issue.
What is your experience with paid, supported software from companies like
'the evil empire'? Personally, I have been in many situations where I was
ready, willing and able to pay someone large amounts of money for a
solution to a problem.
The lesson I have learned: If I have found what appears to be a bug, it
generally is. The end result of paying someone for support is you spend
endless time on the phone going through an "idiot list" of questions until
you either 1) get blown off, or 2) finally get to speak to a developer who
simply says, yes, it's a bug. But either way, it won't get
fixed. Basically, I have found that free support from other users on the
internet, and searching archives of mailing lists and resources like
deja.com, to be far superior in quality, timeliness, (and price) to paid
telephone support for commercial products.
In the open source world, it is true that nobody is accountable, and you
are never guaranteed a response. Although it defies reason, though, the
support available on resources such as this one is in practice far more
useful than paid support. Perhaps there are some things that money just
can't buy - e.g. being part of a discussion forum with technical people who
are innately familiar with the software (as well as the ones who _wrote_
it) and probably like what they are doing a lot more than the guy answering
the tech support line for Microsoft.
Jamie
At 01:03 AM 11/2/00, Keith Parkansky wrote:
>Without such a thing, the Evil Empire will never
>be wiped off the face of the earth because corporate
>IS managers can't base systems on products where
>one *might* find an answer to an issue on a list
>or Web site. Linux distributors will only go so
>far in offering support for the applications
>included in their distributions.
>
>If there are any commercial support operations
>available, where can I find contact information
>for them ?
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