On 1/2/2010 9:01 PM, Siddhesh Poyarekar wrote:
On Sat, Jan 2, 2010 at 8:46 PM, Ronygnulinuxist@gmail.com wrote:
Or if someone sets it up for him. He is not going to develop inhouse linux expertise just to be able to test this software.
True.
+1 and they should hence be paying for support for that software if they're looking at moving to a FOSS program because it is better. If they're looking at FOSS only as a cost cutting compromise then they're screwed anyway because they've misunderstood the first thing about FOSS -- it is Free as in Freedom (mukt) and not food (muft).
Wow ! You guys are really not in touch with market realities. You expect someone to pay for support to test whether a particular (unknown and unrecognised) software is going to meet his needs ? You actually think so ? Please find me one such client....i would like to see it happen.
Secondly, the CA concerned is not going to bother to test the software and then put details of bugs he has found on the mailing list and sit on his hunches waiting for somone some time to respond. He would instead be interested only if he has a direct access to the developer where he can pick up the phone and say "hey buddy, this is what we did and it went like this which is not how the accounts should be." and to be able to explain what happened or should happen and perhaps get them to duplicate it at their end. If you want domain experts to do the software testing, then you cant (at least in this case) wait for a linux savy and linux expert CA to come and do it.
Yes. Many people are not 'file a bug report' savvy.
Yes, but there's a number of them who would be perfectly willing to pick up a phone and make a call to someone to complain/troubleshoot. Support helps here. Paid support helps quicker.
This thing actually makes me laugh.
We work with a number of software. When we started first with SAGE ERP and CRM, they didnt ask us to pay for support or pay for getting the software running when we were yet to decide whether to recommend it to our clients. They had someone install a copy on a local pc for us to test. Their support engineer in mumbai was available to us on phone when we had some questions on how it works and some configuration tool. Mind you, they didnt say get on our mailing list.
Today we are testing another accounting software from another local indian vendor. I am not paying for support. If they were to ask me for money for that, i will throw out that software and choose another.
If ofcourse we were trying out SAP, it would be a different story. They dont need to prove anything to us as they already have a 70% market share. However, thinking back, I remember they also offered us help through some of their implementation partners when we were evaluating whether it suites our clients