Date: Sat, 7 Jun 1997 17:47:30 +0930 (CST) From: Michael Smith <msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au> To: michaelv@MindBender.serv.net (Michael L. VanLoon -- HeadCandy.com) Cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Exchange vs. Notes Message-ID: <199706070817.RAA11671@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> In-Reply-To: <199706070723.AAA01292@MindBender.serv.net> from "Michael L. VanLoon -- HeadCandy.com" at "Jun 7, 97 00:23:19 am"
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Michael L. VanLoon -- HeadCandy.com stands accused of saying: > > >So where can we grab the source from to validate your claims, check > >for security holes, or make variances between what you think we want > >and we want for ourselves? > > Uh yeah, right. Look, I'm all for the free Unix thing myself, but > there really is a market for commercial software and enterprise level > support. Try to get the source code to Digital Unix. Or HP/UX. :-) Yup. If I go, cap in hand (and a large cheque as well), such things can be had. Or at the very least, I can look to a wide range of functionally equivalent alternatives, whose behaviour, security, etc. can be studied and modified to suit the requirements of a particular situation. But Exchange is, and seeks to be, something other. Microsoft have made no bones about crushing any possible alternatives (you have yourself alluded to this), yet refusing any chance of peer review. This isn't unique to Exchange; it is standard MS policy, along with any number of reprehensible development policies. It's perhaps unfair to restrict this complaint to MS; many other companies practice it, and I think no differently of them. > >Until MS are willing to play the right game, small ISVs like us are > >just going to keep ignoring them. I suspect that they really don't > >care, but I certainly feel no need to be polite about them in > >return. 8) > > Hey, believe it or not, I'm with you. Currently, FreeBSD and/or > NetBSD are about the best OS' available for ISPs. They have so many > advantages for that particular market. Please reread what I wrote. In particular ISV != ISP. The people that pay most of my way develop unique data acquisition and control software for a wide variety of research applications. We work wherever possible with "free" software, because bitter experience has shown that the only support that you can truly count on is your own, and to a considerable but somewhat lesser degree, that of other concerned individuals. The few "non-free" software components we work with are continual thorns in our collective backside. Policies such as those that MS espouse are anathamatical to the modes of operation that an organisation such as ours must follow in order to survive. Effectively, we survive by our wits, not large injections of capital, ripe for the picking by way of "support contracts", "developer programs", "training conferences" and the like. In fact, as you may have observed, we have a healthy contempt for that whole attitude. And consequently, we have yet to sink completely under, and in fact continue to come up with neat, innovative solutions to interesting problems faster, cheaper and more reliably than any of our competitors. Ok, so I'm in sales mode too 8) > On the other hand, the places where Exchange shines, are medium sized > companies to mega corporations, where commercial support is not only > preferred, but often required. *snort* You will note that, in most cases, "commercial support" comes from parasitic organisations normally formed by ex-inhouse support staff who now make considerably more working for themselves, solving the same problems over and again. Having worked in various situations in and around these organisations (my first contract job was installing a Lantastic network for the Adelaide DMR office), it is intersting to note that "talking to the vendor" appears to be semantically similar to "waving a dead chicken". ie., support such as you claim is fundamentally a joke at anything less than the "mega corporation" level, at which point it's completely irrelevant, as the deal is closed with luch tours, new golf clubs, quiet transactions of large numbers of Frequent Flier points, new cars, houses, "customer loyalty bonuses", or any of hundreds of point-of-sale tactics. Don't laugh; I'll show you a very nice set of NCR carbon-fibre drivers if you come around. "Requirements" for "commercial" support generally boil down to : - I don't want difficult items on my risk-analysis list. - I don't want my boss on my ass for putting difficult things on her risk-analysis list. - I don't want to miss out on the perks and freebies. - "Nobody ever got fired for buying XXXX" (that's the "if it fails we can always sue them" attitude). Basically, "support" from major vendors, from almost any perspective, is oxymoronic. Squeezing the competition out of a market just makes support cheaper, as you can offer less, and worse, without losing your customers. You may well argue that small "vertical" market suppliers are irrelevant; it's a common mistake. Ask yourself how much industrial automation is run off "shrinkwrapped" software? How many of the basic utilities could operate without specialised control tools? How much in the way of new research is dependant on a few postdocs with a tiny grant and some technical specialists for hire? etc. It's fine to tramp the well-paved roads with the iron jackboot of conformity, but crush the weeds and there is nobody left to split the bedrock. Perhaps that's a bit melodramatic, and I am perhaps blurring your intentions and your associations, for which I beg some degree of forgiveness. > And don't believe MS is going to ignore the ISP market forever. On > the other hand, what they develop will most likely be significantly > cheaper than commercial Unix solutions, but will still not be free. *shrug* The ISP market is already in its death throes. The telcos have decided there is money to be made in it, as was inevitable from the start. All that is left is for them to slowly develop enough of a clue to bring the complaint threshold down into the financial noise, and the "ISP" market will be no more. > Michael L. VanLoon michaelv@MindBender.serv.net -- ]] Mike Smith, Software Engineer msmith@gsoft.com.au [[ ]] Genesis Software genesis@gsoft.com.au [[ ]] High-speed data acquisition and (GSM mobile) 0411-222-496 [[ ]] realtime instrument control. (ph) +61-8-8267-3493 [[ ]] Unix hardware collector. "Where are your PEZ?" The Tick [[
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