> >I'm not actually saying anything different. I wish SuSE well in their > >efforts to sell maintenance and support - it's a major requirement for > >corporate acceptance. > > Agreed entirely. Remember though, the nice thing about open-source is that, > if you're a big/confident enough outfit, you're free to turn down the > support contract from Vendor X, hire/train programmers, and bring it all in > house. Not saying many would want to, but it's always there - you have the > source, you have control.
De facto, you have the belt and braces option. If you get a problem, invoke your support contract and start looking yourself. IBM's domination of the corporate computing world back at th eend of the 1960s was achieved in just such an environment - over on the IBM mainframe mailing list, lots of techies are suggesting that IBM should dump its OCO (object code only) strategy and revert to open source practices. Some of the major subsystems (e.g. JES3) would not be what they are today without the involvement of early users like Rolls Royce and Xerox. We're in a different and perhaps more interesting environment today, since we have the Internet, Usenet and mailing lists like this one. You no longer need to have expertise back at the ranch in every aspect of a system - you can post your issue/problem and (usually) get a pretty good free tutorial by return mail. -- Phil Payne The Devil's IT Dictionary - last updated 2002/01/20: http://www.isham-research.com/dd.html UK +44 7785 302803 Germany +49 173 6242039
