From owner-freebsd-chat Fri Jan 3 01:28:41 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.4/8.8.4) id BAA09282 for chat-outgoing; Fri, 3 Jan 1997 01:28:41 -0800 (PST) Received: from andrsn.stanford.edu (root@andrsn.Stanford.EDU [36.33.0.163]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.4/8.8.4) with ESMTP id BAA09256 for ; Fri, 3 Jan 1997 01:28:37 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (andrsn@localhost.Stanford.EDU [127.0.0.1]) by andrsn.stanford.edu (8.7.5/8.6.12) with SMTP id BAA17277; Fri, 3 Jan 1997 01:28:07 -0800 (PST) Date: Fri, 3 Jan 1997 01:28:06 -0800 (PST) From: Annelise Anderson To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" cc: Amancio Hasty , Michael Smith , chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD into larget corp. environment? In-Reply-To: <7510.852176189@time.cdrom.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-chat@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Wed, 1 Jan 1997, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: > > a bug to Sun or Microsoft. Perhaps, we should designate a FreeBSD > > representative whom large corporations should contact . > > It's the question of paying that representative so that they're fully > accountable which seems to be up in the air here. :-) > > Jordan I think you need more than a representative--you need a real corporate entity, a central organization with whom the large corporation can contract for various services as they need them, whether it's security problems, equipment that won't work, or whatever. It seems to me that except for a central person to make sure corporate requests get handled promptly and appropriately, the professionals in this organization could be independent contractors to the corporation who have the time (at least now and then) to take on some extra work for pay--essentially, the same people who are contributing now to the development of FreeBSD and running FreeBSD systems professionally. You could then argue that the support organization is make up of experts around the world in a wide range of fields, and that corpor- ations would get the kind of help they need when they need it... Corporations would probably like some assurance that the expert to whom they're referred for a particular problem is a responsible person, and the greatest legal problem with such an approach might be protecting "FreeBSD Inc." from lawsuits resulting from damage or theft of corporate data. But I imagine there are some standard contracts for computer consultants that deal with such matters. Just one point of view... Annelise