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Xref: sserve comp.unix.misc:10556 comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit:5159 comp.unix.bsd:13104 comp.windows.x.i386unix:5881 biz.sco.general:9418 Newsgroups: comp.unix.misc,comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit,comp.unix.bsd,comp.windows.x.i386unix,biz.sco.general Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!mel.dit.csiro.au!its.csiro.au!dmssyd.syd.dms.CSIRO.AU!dmsperth.per.dms.CSIRO.AU!uniwa!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!yeshua.marcam.com!news.kei.com!uuspew.uu.net!uunet!sparky!dsndata!backbone!backbone!wayne From: wayne@backbone.uucp (Wayne Schlitt) Subject: Re: SCO market share In-Reply-To: nigel@stonewall.demon.co.uk's message of Thu, 16 Dec 1993 09: 32:11 +0000 Message-ID: <WAYNE.93Dec17083053@backbone.uucp> Sender: wayne@backbone (Wayne Schlitt) Reply-To: tssi.com!backbone!wayne Organization: The Backbone Cabal References: <2efuku$4vj@rhombus.cs.jhu.edu> <9312142221.aa02201@fags.stonewall.demon.co.uk> <1993Dec15.015758.17502@news.csuohio.edu> <9312160932.aa05151@fags.stonewall.demon.co.uk> Date: Fri, 17 Dec 1993 14:30:53 GMT Lines: 44 In article <9312160932.aa05151@fags.stonewall.demon.co.uk> nigel@stonewall.demon.co.uk (Nigel Whitfield) writes: > In article <1993Dec15.015758.17502@news.csuohio.edu> thx1139@babbage.cba.csuohio.edu (tim werner) writes: > > > >At least when you have the source there's a chance you, or someone on > >the net, can figure it out. > > I'm the editor of a magazine. Not a C programmer. Whatever platform > we're using, I want the operating system to work and not fall over at > a time when a couple of hours delay will cost us thousands of pounds. > > The economics of the business demand that you have come-back on > support. err, umm, if support is so critical for you, why don't you *pay* for it? If you buy your Linux distribution from say Yggdrasil you get a 1-900 number for installation support, and a list of people and places that will do more extensive support. If you are really hot on support, you could hire someone to do in house support. It is all a matter of how critical you think support is. I know of one business that sells it's $35,000 software package on, among other systems, netBSD. At that price, the customers expect things to *work*. They really don't care if the version of YP that USL got from sun is buggy, and that Dell, or whoever doesn't think that they can fix it. They can simply charge $1500 per copy of "supported NetBSD" and then use that money to hire someone full time to support the system. Believe me, the support they have to do with NetBSD is less than most other commercial OS's that they use. This comes out to be a big win all the way around. Now, you would be crazy to just drop your critical package onto an untested OS, commercial or free. You would also be crazy to just write off gcc, Linux, or perl just because it is "free" software. You need to try these systems and *see* if the work well for you. Then phase them in as you feel comfortable. The business I referred to above uses many non-commercial packages simply because no commercial packages support everything they needed to do. Yacc just couldn't handle the size of the grammars, so Bison was used instead. Gcc still supports the 68000, and HP's compilers don't. -wayne