RE: Commercial support, was Re: [HACKERS] v6.4.3 ?

Jan,
My company Rakekniven provides professional support
packages for our business line of PostgreSQL servers. But
this is in addition to our servers that we build and test
by hand. In other words, the servers that we warranty
have been thoroughly tested (a generation behind) and are
a combination of hardware/software that we feel comfortable
with. Needless to say we spell out in detail, in the
maintenance contract, what the limitations of the software
are and what actions we are willing to provide to the
customer, including, replacing the server.
But you must also remember that all software companies,
including Microsoft, warrant only the media the software
comes on and take absolutely no responsibility for the
use (damage) that may arise from using the software. Take
a look at one of your professional software licenses and
read it. You will find that according to these licenses
that most commercial software is no better than shareware
(License wise).

That's why, in the licenses, you see these big clauses
that say this software is not suitable for use in Nuclear
Power reactor's, etc... As an example, read one of IBM's
Mainframe License's, IBM only guaranties that the hardware
is free from all major defect's, without defining what those
defect's are. And IBM reserved the right to replace that
hardware at there discretion.

D. Gowin

-----Original Message-----
From: jwieck(at)debis(dot)com [mailto:jwieck(at)debis(dot)com]
Sent: Monday, February 08, 1999 9:12 AM
To: terry(at)terrym(dot)com
Cc: hackers(at)postgreSQL(dot)org
Subject: Re: Commercial support, was Re: [HACKERS] v6.4.3 ?

Terry Mackintosh wrote:

>
> Hi all
>
> > > That's the reason. One of the biggest drawbacks against
> > > Postgres is (for many companies at least), that you can't buy
> > > support.
>
> IMHO ...
>
> Well, yes one can, one may just need to look around a bit... and pay
> commercial support prices.
>
> Example:
> As for my self I feel confident that I could provide such support, having
> been using Postgres+ since Postgres 0.95? (3?4 years ago?). I charge
> $25/hour, but have been considering going to $30/hour. While I've yet to
> get a PostgreSQL specific job, I have had some other Linux based jobs.
>
> [...]

Nice idea.

But a word of caution seems appropriate.

Commercial support doesn't mean only that you can hire
someone who takes care about your actual problems with the
product. It also means that there is someone you can bill if
that product caused big damage to you (product warranty).

Commercial support doesn't mean only that you hire someone on
a T/M base (time and material). It also means that you can
sign a support contract with a regular payment and have
written down response- and maximum problem-to-fix times,
escalation levels etc.

For these issues (and there are more) you would need an
assurance in the background (or a big company). But this
requires that you have quality assurance management on top of
the development. And that you have aggreed procedures where
escalation levels from your support activate the core
developers in specified times to solve problems. And it
requires that you have more precise product specifications
telling what the product can and where it's limits are.
Otherwise you wouldn't be able to pay the assurance.

There are already distributions of Linux out where you can
buy commercial support with them. They stay behind the
bleeding edge of development and are offered by companies,
that have their own development team apart from the internet
community.

Looking at how we are organized (or better unorganized), all
this high level commercial support seems far away.

Jan

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