[NTLUG:Discuss] Non-subscription enterprise licenses?

[David Stanaway]

Chris Cox wrote:
> Carl Haddick wrote:
>   
>> On Wed, Oct 07, 2009 at 03:10:47AM -0500, Ralph Green wrote:
>>     
>>> On Wed, 2009-10-07 at 01:19 -0500, Chris Cox wrote:
>>>       
>>>> On Wed, 2009-10-07 at 00:39 -0500, David Stanaway wrote:
>>>>         
>>>>> I am shocked to discover that windows is going to be cheaper than Linux
>>>>> for a vendor supported platform for an app I need to run. Please say it
>>>>> isn't so!
>>>>>           
>>>> Please look at:
>>>> http://www.ntlug.org/BP-ccox/GetTheFacts
>>>>
>>>>         
>> I don't argue much with vendor support, but it's a shame there is often
>> no flexibility in management decisions.  When I ran my own company I had
>> almost no vendor support for anything at first because I couldn't afford
>> it.  As I got up steam I found myself uninterested in vendor support for
>> software.  All our key stuff ran under Linux, and I felt that if I had
>> no vendor support it amounted to evolutionary pressure to be
>> self-sustaining.
>>
>> That's completely out of step with the world, I know.
>>
>>     
>
> Not as out of step as you might think.  More and more, people are
> finding that vendor support is pretty poor.  Shoot, I can't even
> find a good salesman... sigh....  things are going downhill.
>
> Eventually everything will be................     ......
> .......  .......
> Google (gotcha!)
>   

I hope I didn't come across as a big Microsoft Fan, although over the
years, my cynicism of them has diminished quite a bit.

I guess I am frustrated at having my hands tied to get a support
contract I don't need for the OS to run a component of a much bigger
spend item and not void the expensive support contract on that.

For the most part, I have not been burnt by support with the get of of a
tight spot free  - that config is not supported card.  I have had my
fair share of the you need to upgrade to the latest version of our
software before we will support you with escalating your clearly
identified engineering defect up the food chain wheel spinning, but I
have had issues with one particular vendor that comes to mind that left
a bad taste.

Management concern to ensure that investment in a particular product is
not risked by cutting corners that might invalidate support on it are
more than reasonable, but I wish that more companies that offer
commercial solutions would support Debian for instance. It is not as if
it is a huge moving target with releases ever 6 months or something!

I don't have a problem with the price of the enterprise offerings from
RHEL and SLES, but don't like being forced into that support contract
when there ar other good options that will definitely work.