Date: Fri, 21 Jul 95 19:41:04 MDT From: terry@cs.weber.edu (Terry Lambert) To: nate@sneezy.sri.com Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, jkh@time.cdrom.com Subject: Re: Support charges ( was Re: SUP target for -STABLE...) Message-ID: <9507220141.AA08055@cs.weber.edu> In-Reply-To: <199507212133.PAA21818@rocky.sri.MT.net> from "Nate Williams" at Jul 21, 95 03:33:45 pm
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> > I'm happy to pay for *actual* support which I receive, but my feel on this > > is that I am not going to pay for a staffer full-time if the work that he or > > she produces goes back to *everyone*. > > Wow, I hope I'm parsing this in-correctly, but my impression is that > *if* you pay for support, you don't want the fixes to go to anyone else. If he pays a full time staffer for the code, he owns the code. And he can do anything he wants with it, including keeping it to himself. > > If I'm going to pay big bucks, then I want the fixes (and the rest of that > > person's time) to myself. > > What do you gain by keeping the fix all to yourself? I'm not trying to > be a software socialist here, but I fail to understand the logic of > hoarding fixes which everyone can share. FreeBSD was created by a large > number of volunteers who have spent *thousands* of hours of their time > w/out compensation to fix bugs. Isn't it only *fair* to give the fix > you've received back in return? In theory, you gain a competitive advantage by having fixes that your competitor does not: "Buy PPP services from us, they *work*". The problem with this is that OS fixes are generally desirable, and so if it's a desirable fix, then it's going to be done anyway. It really depends if you are selling into a commodity market or not as to whether this would yeild you either no competitive advantage or a short term competitive advantage. That said, there are definite benefits to a short term advantage in terms of acquiring marketshare if what you sell is a commodity. Thre is a corresponding long term loss in this in increased maintenance if the fix isn't generally useful: if it isn't, then the owner has to carry it forward themselves over general updates: not a pleasent prospect. All that said, I think that this is all a misunderstanding over whether he personally would be hiring a full time support person instead of sharing the costs of such a person over several contracts with a centralized support agency (the latter being much more likely). Terry Lambert terry@cs.weber.edu --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.
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