Return to BSD News archive
Xref: sserve comp.unix.misc:10619 comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit:5211 comp.unix.bsd:13147 comp.windows.x.i386unix:5980 biz.sco.general:9582 Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!news.intercon.com!uhog.mit.edu!news.mtholyoke.edu!jbotz From: jbotz@mtholyoke.edu (Jurgen Botz) Newsgroups: comp.unix.misc,comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit,comp.unix.bsd,comp.windows.x.i386unix,biz.sco.general Subject: Re: SCO market share Date: 21 Dec 1993 17:27:19 GMT Organization: Mount Holyoke College Lines: 28 Message-ID: <2f7bln$1nk@slab.mtholyoke.edu> References: <2efuku$4vj@rhombus.cs.jhu.edu> <9312170856.aa01663@fags.stonewall.demon.co.uk> <2f4spb$lcq@slab.mtholyoke.edu> <sheldon.756429162@pv141b.vincent.iastate.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: orixa.mtholyoke.edu In article <sheldon.756429162@pv141b.vincent.iastate.edu>, Steve Sheldon <sheldon@iastate.edu> wrote: > Considering these resellers are very likely the same types of people as >your third-party contract support company, I see no way in which you can >claim they are going to offer better support. Perhaps different support, >but not necessarily better. 1) They are not the same people. The third-party support companies tend to be smaller outfits of highly motivated, talented individuals. This makes a big difference... the "resellers" and the large systems vendors have a harder time attracting talent, and it is a well-known fact in the Software Engineering business that "When a programmer is good, he is very, very good, but when he is bad, he is horrid" (Sackman, Ericson, and Grant, 1968, in a study that showed that the difference between the best and worst software engineers when comparing individuals with the same amount of experience, is generally a factor of over an order of magnitude, along both the code-quality and programmer-time-efficiency axes. This study has been corroborated many times since.) 2) The very fact that the OS is free improves the quality of support, as the professional support people can draw upon the collective wisdom of the community (and do). When source is publicly available more bugs are found and squashed, more bad design decissions are criticized early on in the process, etc., etc. -- Jurgen Botz, jbotz@mtholyoke.edu | ``Accountability is the price of openness'' South Hadley, MA, USA | - Daniel Geer