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From: geoff@Veritas.COM (Geoffrey Leach)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386
Subject: Re: '386 Unix Wars
Message-ID: <1991Jan01.183414.19220@Veritas.COM>
Date: 1 Jan 91 18:34:14 GMT
References: <1991Jan01.000527.14406@kithrup.COM>
Organization: VERITAS Software
Lines: 51

From article <1991Jan01.000527.14406@kithrup.COM>, by sef@kithrup.COM (Sean Eric Fagan):
> In article <1990Dec31.213625.5481@Veritas.COM> geoff@Veritas.COM (Geoffrey Leach) writes:
>>In essence, Sean says that the Karl (as an SCO customer) has no right to 
>>expect 
>>that their product should work "as advertised", given their price point which
>>Sean describes as, "somewhat as a loss leader."  
> 
> Really?  Where did I say that?

You're right.  It was Karl.  Sorry 'bout that.

> What Sean says, in essence, is that support is expensive, and I would not
> expect any vendor to spend too much money on a no-win proposition.  If a
> product just does not work, that's one thing, and I mentioned that.  But you
> seem happier to believe that I think software support should cost lots of
> money, something I never said.
> 
> Why don't you try a) reading what I wrote, and b) try dealing with the
> vendors in question before you start saying how they operate?  Or is that
> too much effort?

Well, to answer (b) first.  I have delt with the vendors in question, although
I'm not entirely sure what the point that you're trying to make is.  Are you
saying that they're shipping a bug-free product?  Or that the problems that
Kieth referrs to are unimportant?

As to (a), here's the text from your article:

"Well... look at it another way.  Support personel are expensive.
 Development people are expensive (as are all the people to back them up:
 production, documentation, sales, managers, internal support, hardware
 maintainance, etc.).  So... would you rather have to pay $8000 for a single
 license, and get the support you want, or pay $1000, and get somewhat
 limited support?"

This does sound to me like you think support IS expensive.  If you think
support shoulod NOT be expensive, then its certainly not apparent.  However,
its not what you think that's at issue here, and I didn't intend to dump
on you.  Sorry if it seemed that way. 

My point was that there seems to be a mindset in this industry that product
quality is an economic issue, i.e., that one can "afford" to ship buggy
software, because its "too expensive" to get it right.  Making a profit center
out of product support makes this easier to do.

My proposal is that product support should be provided free with the product.
If this is felt to be too expensive, then the vendor should take a look at
why its expensive.  If the reason is that the product has bugs, then the 
vendor should do a better job of building the product in the first place.

If computers were cars, everyone but the Amish would be dead by now.