Andrew Bartlett wrote:
I think it is worthwhile to expand on the Samba Team's experience with commercial support lists.
The primary experience is that such lists much be maintained, and
current. For many years, our list was unmaintained, but over the last
year we have had a new website maintainer, and at least companies that
don't reply to e-mail are removed.
Hmm, similar to my "refresh once a year" idea.
Who's in charge of making sure that the companies do still answer email?
We do not 'vet' our list, and we don't try to rank the providers. ThisI guess the reason both Andreas and myself think it is a good idea to rank them has to do with the maturity of wine vs. Samba. While it is true that both Andreas and myself believe that our companies should be ranked high (and, at least for me, I also think that the company Andreas work for should be rated high, and even higher), it is also because we believe that this measurement is actually relevant to the service we sell.
avoids a number of issues (how would you rank them?), and this is a
policy I support.
I am yet to encounter a program that "just works" on wine. Even if there are, they still enjoy a large amount of customizing and adapting. As such, there should be an advantage to companies that know how to do that. Almost all wine hacking done for clients are generally useful. Lingnu once produced a whole DLL due to a specific client support need (Unicows). This means that the people best situated to know who is who are the people who receive the patches. While I don't think other companies should not be listed at all, but the potential customers should be able to tell them apart.
We have a broad list of providers in many localities, and this doesI guess neither Andreas nor myself see the way you can provide commercial support for Wine if you can't hack it. I would love to hear from such companies, though, what is their typical support scenario. Maybe it's me who is deluded here.
provide us a place to point users in need of paid help. I don't think
it draws away from the 'top tier' providers, who distinguish themselves
in the way they always have - by being relevant to their customers, and
competing on their own best merits.
Andrew Bartlett
Shachar
-- Shachar Shemesh Lingnu Open Source Consulting ltd. Have you backed up today's work? http://www.lingnu.com/backup.html
