Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

Larry McVoy (lm@bitmover.com)
Mon, 23 Jun 2003 06:37:14 -0700

On Mon, Jun 23, 2003 at 02:32:42PM +0100, David Woodhouse wrote:
> On Mon, 2003-06-23 at 14:22, Larry McVoy wrote:
> > The one flaw in this argument and all of those which say basically "services
> > is the answer" is that it only works if you produce crappy software which
> > needs servicing.
>
> I think you misunderstand; it's not always the _software_ which needs
> looking after.
>
> How much time do you spend supporting BitKeeper users? Quite a lot, I
> suspect. I wouldn't argue that fact makes it 'crappy' software.

Actually, we don't spend that much time supporting users and the time we
do spend tells us where we need to fix the product and/or documentation.
We have a goal of zero support. Anything less than that means the software
is counter intuitive or has some other problem.

Do you think that we'd give out BK for free if all of you were asking for
support every day? We'd be out of business in a week.

> Neither am I arguing that you, personally, should be trying to make a
> living by support alone -- I'm merely observing a trend.

And I'm pointing out that the logic on which that trend is based has some
severe problems. I don't know about you, but I don't want to be part of
a business who's business model is to ship incomplete or broken software
and then charge to fix it. 

-- 

---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm
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