William Stein wrote: > On Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 12:45 AM, Dr. David > Kirkby<david.kir...@onetel.net> wrote: > >>> ould like phone support. Is there anybody here who would help?" >>> >> There might be advantages to actually offing a 'premier service' with >> guaranteed response times, confidentiality etc. The fact that one could >> get the same service for no charge would not matter - it might help get >> Sage used in places where it is not currently used. >> >> Confidentiality could be an issue on public mailing lists. There are >> technical issues I'd wanted to have resolved with Wireshark, which I >> would have not wanted to disclose publicly, as it would have given too >> much information about the use it was going to be put to. >> > > I definitely see your point. >
Good. To be fair, I think confidentiality is more likely to be an issue with Wireshark than Sage, but I can still see cases where confidentiality could be an issue with Sage. IT's unlikely to ever be an issue with OpenOffice for example. > Just for the record, I'm personally not going to be selling support > contracts and making officially supported versions, etc., as you > suggest above. That should be done by a private company that seeks to > make money from Sage, and I am not going to start or run such a > company. If somebody else wants to, then I would be supportive. I > have my own ideas about how I personally will help Sage grow bigger > and more supportive, and becoming a commercial entity is not among > them. > Fair enough, that is your choice. The money does not need to go to you personally, if you do not want it to, so there would be no need to set up a commerical company for this. If the money was used to support the Sage project, by hiring staff, buying better hardware etc then I would think that a good thing. Either way, that is your choice. If you don't feel that is appropiate, you might consider one other alternative, which is to offer free confidential advice to commercial users when there is a specific need to keep information away from public view. A statement on the Sage web site something like this might be useful ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CONFIDENTAIL SUPPORT FOR COMMERCIAL USERS. Sage will improve most rapidy if all support requests are made in public mailing lists. Quiries will be answered most rapidy on the putlic forums. However, in cases where specific information must be withheld from public view, Professor Willliam Stein will offer free support to commerical users on a confidential basis. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Whilst I personally think a paid support contract, with the money donated to the Sage project is preferable, agreeing to offer free advice in confidence would go some way to increasing its accepantace in commerical environments. Dave --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
