From owner-freebsd-hackers Fri Jul 21 17:42:08 1995 Return-Path: hackers-owner Received: (from majordom@localhost) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.11/8.6.6) id RAA02342 for hackers-outgoing; Fri, 21 Jul 1995 17:42:08 -0700 Received: from mercury.Sun.COM (mercury.Sun.COM [192.9.25.1]) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.11/8.6.6) with ESMTP id RAA02336 for ; Fri, 21 Jul 1995 17:42:06 -0700 Received: from Eng.Sun.COM by mercury.Sun.COM (Sun.COM) id RAA05069; Fri, 21 Jul 1995 17:37:48 -0700 Received: from plokta.Eng.Sun.COM by Eng.Sun.COM (5.x/SMI-5.3) id AA27297; Fri, 21 Jul 1995 17:37:43 -0700 Received: by plokta.Eng.Sun.COM (5.x/SMI-SVR4) id AA19299; Fri, 21 Jul 1995 17:37:47 -0700 Date: Fri, 21 Jul 1995 17:37:47 -0700 Message-Id: <9507220037.AA19299@plokta.Eng.Sun.COM> From: "Bryan O'Sullivan" To: tony@thing.sunquest.com Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Support charges ( was Re: SUP target for -STABLE...) In-Reply-To: <9507212353.AA20088@thing.sunquest.com> References: <199507212253.QAA21981@rocky.sri.MT.net> <9507212353.AA20088@thing.sunquest.com> Sender: hackers-owner@freebsd.org Precedence: bulk t> As far as I understand this (from having a friend who works at t> Cygnus) this is their normal method of operation. Cygnus is different in one moderately important regard: they have the GPL to wave at people who don't want the work Cygnus does on software like gdb distributed to the world. That said, it looks to me like Karl Denninger misunderstands the idea behind providing support in the form of patches for problems. If a paying customer doesn't want a patch to go back into the main source tree, then they will have to either (a) reapply the patch themselves the next time they upgrade their system (assuming the patch can be applied) or (b) pay for another patch to be made by the support people. Neither of these options is cost effective from the customer's point of view, since they waste both money and time. "Owning" a patch for a problem may look good if you don't think it through very far, but it is counterproductive.