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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."
All of a sudden, that commercial comes to mind, "The _stapler's_ down! The _stapler's_ DOWN!"
They'd best make sure they have a support contract for their staplers. And for their pens & pencils, etc. Critical items, all.
Maybe this explains why it's so expensive to do business here, and jobs have to be shifted overseas. Then we can get our stapler support from India!
Symmetry. I like it.
In my experience, it doesn't matter if support is 24/7 or three hours a day on odd days of the week every other month. So long as there's a support contract involved, that will get it in over something that has no formal support. I've seen companies buy one product over another solely because, while both are commercial software, one of them offers an option for a support contract and the other does not, whether or not the other one is paid support.
Where I'm at now, it's not uncommon to see support contracts for one product (and not anything from or as ubiquitous as Microsoft, either) reach a quarter of a million dollars a year or more. It's insane.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
I work in IT for an aerospace manufacturer, and I am baffled by other company's obsession with commercial support. I feel lucky to work for an employer who isn't a stickler for it.
By far the best support I get is from newsgroups, mailing list archives, or simple RTFM'ing
A company with a boiler-room full of telephone techs simply isn't capable of providing better support than the support that the open source community already puts at my fingertips.