Fw: [Sussex] What the opposition costs

[Geoff Teale]

On Wed, 2004-03-10 at 16:33 +0000, Mark Harrison wrote:

> Not true.
> 
> I sell at least two products with this characteristic... neither of these is
> a monopoly. 


Fair enough.  I am surprised that companies are prepared to take such a
deal.  I see many companies selling a general support and maintenance
contract for their software which would include far more than service
and support than the Microsoft license applies as well as point releases
and general patches - but very few software houses could dictate a flat
fee like this.  I know we couldn't do this, and nor could Thomson (a
much, much larger company than this) and I was never really interested
enough to find out how Claybrook sold things - although I'm not sure
they did sell anything the year I was there.

One things for sure - you are certain to get a lot more service for your
money from the likes of Red Hat _and_ the upgrades you need  - and if
you choose not to you don't have to scrap the technology you can simply
get another party to maintain it for you or do it yourself.

It's notable that even IBM's support and maintenance contracts are
significantly cheaper than Microsoft's *ouch* - and the level of support
and service they seem to be offering (from first hand experience) is in
a different league to anything I've experienced from Microsoft.  

-- 
Geoff Teale
Cmed Technology     /   Free Software Foundation
gteale at cmedltd.com  /   tealeg at member.fsf.org

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