From owner-freebsd-hackers Fri Jul 21 18:57:55 1995 Return-Path: hackers-owner Received: (from majordom@localhost) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.11/8.6.6) id SAA04520 for hackers-outgoing; Fri, 21 Jul 1995 18:57:55 -0700 Received: from rah.star-gate.com (rah.star-gate.com [204.188.121.18]) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.11/8.6.6) with ESMTP id SAA04514 for ; Fri, 21 Jul 1995 18:57:54 -0700 Received: from localhost.v-site.net (localhost.v-site.net [127.0.0.1]) by rah.star-gate.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) with SMTP id SAA06140; Fri, 21 Jul 1995 18:57:29 -0700 Message-Id: <199507220157.SAA06140@rah.star-gate.com> X-Authentication-Warning: rah.star-gate.com: Host localhost.v-site.net didn't use HELO protocol X-Mailer: exmh version 1.6.2 7/18/95 To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" cc: nate@sneezy.sri.com (Nate Williams), Karl Denninger , freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Support charges ( was Re: SUP target for -STABLE...) In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 21 Jul 1995 18:25:57 PDT." <21406.806376357@time.cdrom.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Fri, 21 Jul 1995 18:57:27 -0700 From: "Amancio Hasty Jr." Sender: hackers-owner@freebsd.org Precedence: bulk I think that Karl should shell out thousands of dollars and we split the difference amongs us for all the work that we have done in FreeBSD :) Another way of looking at it, is that commericial interests may not necessarily coincide with the efforts of volunteers or the required environment may not be applicable to most programers; for instance, support for T1 links, problems with the system when it has 128 users or so. Should I go out and buy the necessary equipment to debug such a problem? The other class of problems is the one that may required hardware assist such as a Periscope. Last but not least paying for support may get you into a higher priority. Enjoy, Amancio >>> "Jordan K. Hubbard" said: > > [ Paying for support ] > > > > > > If I'm going to pay for "support", defined as I report problems and some > > > organization works on fixing them, where the person(s) time that is used is > > > amortized over a lot of people, then that organization "owns" the fixes and > > > I get them under what is essentially a license. > > Eh? What? I must have missed something from Karl here since the > quoted text appears in none of the discussions I've seen fly through > my mailbox. > > To answer the above, I think it's a little bit more subtle than that. > Karl has worked with the likes of BSDI, where ownership is pretty > straight-forward, and thus has certain expectations about how this > works. BSDI don't put their software up for anon ftp and they don't > give away their work, meaning that the concept of "fix ownership" is > more apropos there. That's not really the case here, though you could > still use that model with one important twist: FreeBSD, Inc. would > "own" the fixes for about 4 nanoseconds and then transfer the > redistribution rights straight to the public. Problem solved. > > I've already replied to Karl's questions of cost and clarified that he > would NOT be paying for a full-time engineer. He'd be paying a much > more modest fee for the privilege of being able to call a telephone > number or send an email for a quick and reliable response. > > Needless to say, I would not collect so much as *one penny* for > support before such time as I had enough people signed up that I knew > I could pay the salaries of as many people as I thought would be > necessary to run such an org effectively. The last thing I want or > need is to collect money and then have a lot of unhappy customers > saying that the tech support line is constantly busy or they got > fobbed off with an excuse and no fix. > > There's also the question of what to do when we get a problem report > for an area of the system that's clearly in the domain of someone NOT > working for the organization. We can't pass the buck to a volunteer, > so we need to make sure that we have total coverage of the system > replicated in the support organization. This would effectively mean > creating a "shadow FreeBSD Project" of sorts, which would take some > finesse since it means that the corporation is going to have its own > CVS tree and its own lineage of FreeBSD releases or face an even less > desirable situation where volunteers are co-opted into working for the > org or get their toes stepped on when someone in the corporation > rushes in to fix a bug that they're contractually obligated to fix > quickly and don't have much choice about. > > > > If I am going to pay for a person's livelihood in total or substantially in > > > total (ie: thousands of dollars a month) then I own their output. > > > Period. > > > > Are you hiring them as a programmer, or as a support person. There is a > > subtle difference in my mind. When Cygnus was paid to develop gcc for > > To clarify this again: If Karl was paying thousands of dollars a month > he could HAVE the fixes and probably the support engineer's first-born > child as well. That's not the kind of money we're talking about > though and I furthermore don't think that this kind of model would > work anyway for reasons I stated earlier - neither Karl nor we need > the kinds of strings attached that this level of contribution would > imply, certainly at least not for a support contract. > > Jordan >