Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcvax!ukc!dcl-cs!aber-cs!pcg
From: pcg@aber-cs.UUCP (Piercarlo Grandi)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.att
Subject: Re: Trailblazer Setup for HDB  <--[NO! NO! NO!]  for the UNIX PC
Summary: I was not referring to AT&T...
Keywords: HDB 7300 3B1 AT&T support AT&T try hard
Message-ID: <905@aber-cs.UUCP>
Date: 4 May 89 16:10:21 GMT
Reply-To: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi)
Distribution: eunet,world
Organization: Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth
	(Disclaimer: my statements are purely personal)
Lines: 39

In article <779@nsscb.UUCP> det@nsscb.UUCP (Dennis Erwin Thurlow) writes:
    In article <823@aber-cs.UUCP> pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) writes:
    >
    >It is ALMOST ALWAYS the case that it says that you pay money to REPORT bugs,
    >period. Many suppliers will not LISTEN to bug reports unless you pay for
    >them to, and that is all they are prepared to undertake to do for you. In
    >some cases a support contract may also include occasional distributions of
    >software updates, about which no representation is made either.
    >
    Peter,
    This simply isn't true.

Well, just to name names, Sun, Altos and SCO (and 95% of PC sw suppliers)
seem (according to my understanding of their contracts or to experiences
reported on the net) to run a support policy more or less as I have
described (Sun will accept bug report by people that have not paid a support
contract, but will not even acknowledge them).  I was speaking in general,
NOT speaking about AT&T, which has (by hearsay, I have no direct experience)
a good support group, as far as I know. Even if the UNIX licence comes with
all sorts of disclaimers...

    First we hand hold a lot of people through stuff that is in the docs, or
    wierd configurations. Second, even if you buy time, if you report a true
    bug, and we don't have a fix for it, we do not charge you, we escalate
    the problem to the product manager or developers, and while it may take
    some time to get a patch, we do try.

Yeah, yeah. And I am told that you try hard. But, let me say, you do this
simply on a best effort basis, out of your own good disposition. You are
under no OBLIGATION to do this, even to a paying customer.

The rest of the industry is often worse than that (I have seen licences,
like that for BSD Unix from UCB, in which the licencee undertakes to
indemnify the supplier for all damages or expenses demanded of the supplier
by third parties, even for copyright or patent infringement ...).
-- 
Piercarlo "Peter" Grandi           | ARPA: pcg%cs.aber.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth        | UUCP: ...!mcvax!ukc!aber-cs!pcg
Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3BZ, UK | INET: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk