BIND 9.3 Released With Commercial Support

darthcamaro writes "Time for net admins to update BIND: version 9.3 has been released. internetnews.com has a story on it where they talk with Paul Vixie, the founder of BIND's keeper ISC. In it he details why after so many years BIND has finally decided to offer commercial support. 'Many of the companies who use our software free of charge have told us that their corporate risk management strategy requires them to have a bona fide support channel for all of their critical operations,' Vixie said. 'In other words we were told that having the best software wasn't good enough, and giving it away for free wasn't good enough, we also had to ensure that commercial support was available or they could be forced to switch to software they didn't like as well just to get support.' The full press release on the BIND 9.3 release is also available."

Comments

This is a simple reality in corporate use

[Martin Blank]

No support, no sale.

I can understand it to a degree; there's no guarantee that the version installed today will not be completely dropped next month. It gets a little aggravating when it holds up an entire project, though, because of one small piece.

The upside, of course, is more funding for critical projects.

Re:This is a simple reality in corporate use

[Shakrai]

Many of these support contracts are really just the "Circuit City Extended Waranty" of the corporate world.

Have you ever known a PHB that didn't get the extended Circuit City warranty? That's what this is all about -- selling it to the PHBs of the World so we can go on using our OSS that we know works and even with the support contract is cheaper then the commercial alternative.

Re:This is a simple reality in corporate use

[NineNine]

It's not about whether it works or not. It's about being able to call somebody at 2:00AM when a critical machine goes down, as opposed to waiting for your Usenet post to get propogated, then hoping that l334G33k425 responds to your message in a timely manner and gives you the correct answer. Case in point... my retail businesses have a POS system that I paid for. Granted, there aren't any truly viable OSS ones out there yet, but assume there are. It's worth the money for me to be able to get someone on the phone 30 seconds after it crashes to get my business running again. Or if an employee fucks something up, I know that I can absolutely get someone on the phone who will eventually fix my problem. I don't care how good a competing OSS project is supposed to be: no software is perfect, and there absolutely, positively MUST be someone to fix it when the shit hits the fan (as it always does, eventually). When your rent & power bill & paycheck is on the line every day (as mine are), you don't fuck around. Period.

Re:This is a simple reality in corporate use

[jdray]

While I wouldn't have put it quite the way you did, I have to agree with you. If the OSS community keeps up the attitude that Shakrai puts forth, adoption into corporate datacenters and business areas will be slow and agonizing. As you said, people want assurances.

The upside is that companies are used to and willing to fork over large sums of cash for those assurances. So, if you love an OSS project enough to dedicate your life to it, then get to know it inside and out and start offering commercial support for it. If the product is stable, you never have to answer the phone. If you charge $500 per year for support, 100 customers makes for a tidy income. And, honestly, most midsize corporations wouldn't even blink at $500 per year for support on something that goes on a server, unless it was in astonishment at how cheap it was.

Good to see they're 'getting it'

[mgkimsal2]

Not specifically the BIND folks, but it's good to see that people are more and more waking up to this fact. Hopefully the fact that something is 'open source' and people are 'making money' from it won't be a newsworthy item in the near future.

What I think many programmers don't understand is that most people will often choose a so-so product from a well-run business over a better product from a poorly run business or organization. Having no guaranteed support mechanism for BIND (and other projects) does hurt adoption of those projects in many organizations. Option support is essentially the best of both worlds, as long as the prices aren't cost prohibitive. If pricing is too high, there's much less incentive to switch, because people will usually settle for 'good enough' when 'way better' costs a whole lot more.

<PHB>Who needs competent sysadmins?

[GypC]

We bought support. The god-like powers of software vendors are obviously much superior to those of anyone that would work for us, even if the source code is open. </PHB>

Read your EULA please.

[Moderation abuser]

Then come back and start telling us about the guarantees that you get. Oh, and have a look at your support contracts as well to see exactly you are guaranteed.

I think you'll find they amount to little more than "we'll do our best to support our l33t software".

Re:Wait till the next exploit,,,

[ectoraige]

It's not clear why people continue to use BIND.

I continue to use BIND because I don't like DJB's licence.