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Date:      Fri, 21 Apr 1995 16:14:49 -0700
From:      "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@freefall.cdrom.com>
To:        Julian Howard Stacey <jhs@regent.e-technik.tu-muenchen.de>
Cc:        velte@cdrom.com, current@freefall.cdrom.com
Subject:   Re: A Scenario for FreeBSD Commercial Support 
Message-ID:  <24265.798506089@freefall.cdrom.com>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 21 Apr 95 02:09:19 %2B0200." <199504210009.CAA08309@vector.eikon.e-technik.tu-muenchen.de> 

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> Are the folks in FreeBSD agreeable to a regular 13 week release schedule, 
> if the `grunt work' is offloaded onto paid help ? (We'd need 13 week releases
> to fund proper support)
> Would FreeBSD worry about geting over dependent on WC Inc ?

I don't much like this idea.  It would essentially require the users
to upgrade whether they liked it or not every 4 months if they wished
to remain on the tech support rolls.  What happens to the corporate
shop who runs 2.3 for 7 months and likes it just fine, then they one
day have a problem they can't solve with their own techs and they call
us.  "Sorry, you're out of date.  You need to upgrade your entire shop
and fix what isn't broken before we'll help you with your problem."

The rule doesn't mean anything if you don't generally enforce it, and
in this case you're depriving a good customer of one silly question
just because their release of 2.3 worked _too well_ up to now!

If someone is going to pay for tech support, I'd rather it be the
FreeBSD Project, Inc.  Then it could be done on a much more standard
"U want it, U pay for it." kind of support contract basis.  It's like
insurance - most people don't mind paying for first level support if
it only costs a few hundred bucks a year whether they use it actively
or not.  They know it's always there.

I'm not sure WC itself is in the market for selling tech support, even
though it's been talked about.  "We make CDROMS" is what Jack tells me
on a regular basis whenever some tangental business model is
mentioned.

					Jordan



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