Les Mikesell wrote:
> On Thu, 2005-09-29 at 10:04, Lamar Owen wrote:
>
>
>>2.) Paying Customer had intermittent lockups of the machine that were
>>difficult to reproduce;
>>3.) Paying Customer got tired of Red Hat's 'WORKSFORME' bug resolution (that's
>>the typical bugzilla tag when such an irreproducible problem occurs);
>>4.) Paying Customer quit paying and switched to Windows, which worked better
>>for them (meaning, it didn't crash).
>>
>>Now, just exactly what part of this is untrue or would require a Microsoft
>>payoff?
>
>
> Why is it news worth publishing that some piece of hardware somewhere
> crashes in a way that no one else can reproduce?
The reasons it's worthy of attention is not the problem itself,
but the attitude manifested by someone PAID TO CARE WHAT HAPPENS, AND
WHO SEEMINGLY DIDN'T GIVE A SH*T.
I had dealings with RH's sister corp, Blue Hat some time back, while
I was employed by a large corporation which some here would recognize
the name of. When I had dealings with them, I constantly had to remind
them that *I* was the one with the money in my hand, and *THEY* were
the ones with a shingle hanging out asking for some of it. Since we
were using at the time two other RTOS which would run on the same
hardware (one in-house developed, another from one of their competitors)
we got what we wanted. But a PAYING CUSTOMER SHOULD NOT HAVE TO ARGUE
WITH HIS SERVICE PROVIDER. PERIOD.
Now, I got along with the *indivduals* just fine. So if Greg is out
there reading this, I DO NOT MEAN YOU. I mean the corporate way
of dealing with customers.
>>Sorry for the rant, but it is ridiculous to automatically dismiss a real-world
>>problem.
>
>
> Problems happen all the time. Why is this one newsworthy? If someone
> made such a big deal out of every Windows BSOD there wouldn't be room
> to publish anything else? The problem could almost certainly have been
> fixed as well by replacing the problematic hardware (even if the problem
> is in the Linux driver it will be fixed by using something different).
> Would it still be a big news item: "PC crashes,owner buys replacement!"?
The point is fourfold:
(1) RHEL is PAID TO CARE
(2) MS software ran, and RHEL did not, so
(3) the customer left for greener pastures, and
(4) RHEL can expect more of the same...
Look at it this way: Suppose you bought an automobile, and liked
it. Suppose that you saw an ad somewhere, saying that an add-on
dealer would put a new motor in the auto for a certain price, and
would guarantee good performance and good gas mileage, and would
maintain it for a certain monthly fee. Suppose then
that you bought the new motor, and it had rough idling, and used
lots of gas, and often stalled in traffic and wouldn't restart.
And when you called the fellow about your problem, he said
"Well, nobody else is having these problems. You must be doing
something wrong!" So you took out the motor and got another
and a maintenance contract from a different dealer, and the
auto has run fine since.
How would you feel, and would you recommend this fellow to your
friends and acquaintances?
Now, I happen to like what I run on my machine (FC2). It works
fine. And I'm not troubled by the lack of support, because I
don't pay for any. But PAYING CUSTOMERS NEED TO BE TREATED LIKE
PAYING CUSTOMERS. And if they don't, they vote with their
wallets. I like Linux, and I like RH Linux, and I'd like to see
them stay around.
So, this article is of interest to me, because if RHEL doesn't make
money, I'm not going to have any RH version of Linux.
Back when the IBM PC was first being designed, there were two teams,
one of which used the MC68000 processor, the other the Intel iAPX8088
processor. The former was, very arguably, a better machine when it
was built, but it failed, because of the well-known propensity of
Motorola to charge customers for developing peripheral chips, and
wanting to retain ownership, while Intel said "You want a new timer
chip? You got it!" and cheerfully developed the peripherals they
needed. So the PCs today use Intel products, not the arguably
better Motorola products.
Mike
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