Re: AN IMPORTANT MESSEGE FROM SYMBOLICS SOFTWARE SUPPORT SERVICES

[Barry Margolin <barmar@THINK.COM>]

    Date: Thu, 17 Aug 89 08:53:08 CDT
    From: mac%cadillac.cad.mcc.com@mcc.com (Mac Michaels)

    With a policy like this it kind of makes me glad that I no longer use a
    Symbolics.  Such a policy is warranted only when you ship software and
    documentation with absolutely no bugs, errors, or inconsistencies.  It
    seems only fair that you pay people who report bugs and their solutions a
    royality each time you sell that information.

That's a highly idealistic attitude, and businesses work on profit, not
altruism.  Does your current vendor (Sun, I presume) pay you for your
bug reports?

First of all, not all calls to SW Support are to report bugs; many
times, it is customers asking for assistance.  Why should they get such
help without paying for it?  Sometimes the customer is looking for
patches that enhance the system for the purposes of specific
applications.

Second, why should software be any different from hardware?  If I don't
pay for a service plan, and a board fails, I'd have to pay Symbolics to
send someone to replace the board.  By the same token, if you don't pay
for SW Support, and you discover a failing function, you pay for
Symbolics to send you a fixed version.

Software support is a service, not a right.

                                                barmar