RE: IDEA:Offical Debian Support Team?
On Tue, 20 Apr 1999, Madel, Kurt wrote:
> I believe that support for Debian is very important and is something that
> should be investigated. However, I believe that it may be difficult to
> combat an over-commercialized distribution if you start pushing for
> professional 24X7 commercial support. The kind of support that corporate
> business requires is of the commercial variety.
Actually, "corporate business" has resources in place to do INTERNAL
support. The sort of telephone "camp on hold" support lines that have
become what people think of as technical support are something that
"corporate business" can do without if their internal support personnel
have the tools they need to do their jobs without it.
I believe that the so-called information revolution is going through its
third phase. The first phase was when computers were large, rare, and
expensive. The second phase started with the rise of the microcomputer
and the introduction of the ISV. The third phase started with the rise of
the Internet and the introduction of freeware of "commercial" quality and
a substantial feature set.
People keep talking about how Linux, and other freeware, are "unsupported"
like what they get from Microsoft can be characterized as "support."
However, I view poor support as a problem of the second phase and as soon
as we can escape second-phase thinking (such as "I've got to have a
toll-free telephone number that I can call to harass the vendor") the
issue of "support" will simply disappear.
After all, who needs support when you (or your hired expert) has the
source?
--
Jonathan Guthrie (jguthrie@brokersys.com)
Brokersys +281-895-8101 http://www.brokersys.com/
12703 Veterans Memorial #106, Houston, TX 77014, USA
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