Date: Sat, 22 Jul 1995 18:34:10 -0400 From: dennis@et.htp.com (dennis) To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Support charges ( was Re: SUP target for -STABLE...) Message-ID: <199507222234.SAA28620@mail.htp.com>
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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. > There are several different philosophies on this, and I think that they are vary depending on the situation. There needs to be a differentiation between "fix" and "improvement", and I think that all of you are missing this. As for paying a "staffer" (or consultant or doing it myself), you pay because you want the fix NOW and there is financial value for that alone. I have a product to sell and I can't wait for the things that are a priority to ME to filter through the general priority list. Usually, I want "fixes" to go to everyone, because having a good base product is important, and I also want others to share their fixes with me...so its a fairness thing. Now sometimes we make improvements, and those belong to us. It our competitive advantage....our " improvement" may not appeal to the general public, but it is an improvment for what we're doing. I generally keep these. With FreeBSD, it depends, although at this point there aren't many doing what we're doing with FreeBSD so it probably doesn't matter. BSDI won't let me distribute my improvements in source form, and I'm certainly not going to give them to BSDI. Another issue is control, and this generally applies to larger scale developments. We wrote our own PPP for our sync cards, for example, because it became impossible to support and control a product that was in one case owned by someone else (BSDI) and public in another (FreeBSD) and just plain messed up in another (Linux). Now we have one product for all three, a portable product, that we control. Development costs were about $15,000., and we're not going to share the source, not because we're mean, bad guys but if we do someone will port it over to someone elses board and we will be helping to create a competitor. As a commercial vendor its the only way to do things. Dennis
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