On Friday 04 June 2004 08:29, Austin Godber wrote:
> Don Calfa wrote:
> > You get software written by the distros specifically for the distro.
> > You get support which you don't get with MS.
> > You get a 3rd party to back your purchase that most companies require.
> > You can't hold a community accountable for a bad patch.
>
> So the customers pay because they WANT to pay it.
>
> BTW, can RH or SUSE be held accountable for a bad patch? Don't EULA's
> exempt them from this accountability? Of course they may not be LEGALY
> accountable but rather they need to act in good faith to keep their
> coustomers.
>
> I think I now underestand why Debian Stable is TWO year old software.
>
> Austin
1) The EULA is the vendor's (or author's) *attempt* to say "don't sue me."
Someone may still decide to sue, and more importantly, the court may decide
that the EULA is garbage and that the vendor (or author) is liable in spite
of it. [Just because you *say* you're not responsible for some act doesn't
negate your responsibility as the courts may see it.]
2) Companies prefer to work with some entity (individual or business) they can
hold accountable. If necessary, they can threaten to send in the attorneys
(and cost everyone lots of time, money and bad publicity) to force that
entity (individual or business) to perform.
Therefore: Companies don't like "community support" basically because there's
no entity (individual or business) whose arm they can twist to get what they
think is their due.
This is a fundamental property of anyone (or any company) attempting to
do business in open source. If the vendor (Red Hat, MontaVista, Suse, etc.)
can be held accountable, businesses will "do business" with them (for an
often surprising number of dollars). But when the "community" (Linus +
uncountable others) can't readily be identified, brought together under one
legal system (US? Finland? Japan?), and then sued (GPL disclaimers have to be
challenged at this point), then businesses fear they may be "left holding the
bag." And remember that, if they are left "holding the bag", some manager or
VP is probably going to be blamed, and so that individual (back at the front
end of the decision process) is much more likely to spend the company's (not
his own) money on a "vendor supported" product.
It's all about accountability.
--
Ed Skinner,
ed@flat5.net,
http://www.flat5.net/
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