Yes... and no. This is what I ran up against when repairing a mail server Friday. Like most OpenSource projects, it's not self-contained. It uses Sendmail (gack, gag) as the MTA. It runs on CentOS (so I had to learn its crotchets, though I can honestly say that's now I'm glad I did). We also have an outboard Spam filtering appliance. Getting them all to play nicely together is the trick.
AND... even when you pay for support (as we do on the Barracuda Spam appliance), since it's not a unitized, self-contained package/system, the support people are likely to say, "oh, the problem's not with our stuff. It must be your mail server."
He asked me which mail server I was using. I said, "Scalix." He replied, "never heard of that one."
And of COURSE he recommended that we just buy Exchange Server 2007. Strongly implied: he could help us with that one.
(Which is the rest of the story to my other post here, and this is when I briefly considered taking him up on that advice.:) )
Don't think I'm picking on you, but your post makes another point about F/OSS. Let's say I try program A, probably because it came with my Linux distribution. It won't work with certain codecs (or file formats, or whatever -- this is a surprisingly broad-based problem).
I go to the forum for that product (I *HAVE* learned not to even download and install something that doesn't at least have a support forum nowdays!!). I post, "I can't get the Gnarliewidgies to work."
The standard responses, in no particular order, will be:
1. "Works fine on my system." (Implied: your hardware sucks or you've done something wrong.)
2. "Ah, don't use that program, it's trash. Use this alternative..." So you download and install it (after figuring out how to uninstall the first one). You discover that it will indeed work with Gnarliewidgels, but there's something ELSE that it won't support. Or, the interface sucks. Or, it hangs when playing 3 minute long movies with dancing chickens.
This is another problem: there's no one standard (as alluded to here in plenty of other posts). Even comparing Gnome and KDE is like apples and oranges in some respects. They're both desktop environments, but they have radically different views in some cases about how to accomplish what they're trying to do.
Ergo, et sum: you were a "#2." "Try this alternative." I *guarantee* that the original poster will try it and find what I've said -- that there's something else that it won't do.
This is the other problem: F/OSS users tend to be a bit more technically-inclined to start with. We will tweak stuff without even realizing that we're doing it -- so when we recommend it to someone who's less technically inclined, they're blown up.
We also tend to have limited requirements for the software that we install. Ex.: I've published dozens of articles to date, all of which were done in OpenOffice as.DOCs (because that's what the publishers wanteD), and -- believe it or not! -- KolourPaint to do the touchup on my illustrations. But for someone who needs to do more than I, this will be wholly inadequate.
... is my key principle. I'm capable of RTM'ing and Googling to find answers, but especially as I get older, I don't have the time I used to.
Just yesterday, I was struggling with an Open Source mail server. Having to read separate (and usually incomplete) (not to mention incomprehensible at times) documentation on each component, THEN figure out how it all played together... just to be honest, I briefly (briefly!) considered telling Corporate that we needed to just bite the bullet and go with an Exchange Server with full support.
Fortunately, I got this one working (again), and it's holding for now. But my #1 complaint is the lack of clear, easy-to-follow documentation. I love F/OSS -- I run Suse at home, and I've fallen head-over-heels for VirtualBox -- but this is my biggest complaint. We have a lot of brilliant coders working in F/OSS. We need to attract some equally-brilliant technical writers to donate time to explain how the stuff works in the real world.
Forget the books. Concentrate on being best friends. All of the advice about "communication" and "compatibility" and "caring" will fall right in line... if you're best friends.
It has worked for us for 15 years.:)
Shoot, I'd be happy to get a reliable, reasonably-priced 1.5Mhz up and down here in Birmingham, AL, for our company's servers. You can get decent download -- 6Mhz is common -- but ATT is extremely stingy with upload. The ratios are typically 256/1.5, 384/3 and 512/6 on their DSL lines. Other technologies are available (such as Metro Ethernet, bonded T1 or business broadband through the cable company) but they're quite expensive -- as much as $1,000 a month. As a result, co-location is expensive, too.
Right next door in Atlanta, about 100 miles away, all of this is available at reasonable prices. That's the difference that competition makes.
OK, if it works for games, when is the F/OSS community going to figure this out?
There are plenty of us in small-to-medium-sized businesses who use F/OSS software, and who'd love to "buy" it from the vendor. But the price disparity between the "free" download and the "supported" version is usually quite prohibitive for a smaller business.
We've been comparing groupware/mail systems. We have somewhere between 300-400 users. One company that we're looking at would charge over $1000 a year for this, and we just can't justify that. So... we continue to use their unpaid "community" edition.
Here's the thing: after using the free community edition for a couple of years, we really don't need the 24/7 support. If we have a problem, we go into the (free) forums, or just figure it out ourselves. Paying $1000 for support that we'll rarely use just doesn't make good economic sense.
F/OSS proponents would then say, "well, at least make a donation." Businesses don't work like that, and PHB's certainly don't think like that at all. For one thing, unless the software vendor is a non-profit, you can't deduct the donation. We COULD deduct, say, a $100 "basic" fee for the software with little or no support.
Compare the price of the downloaded CentOS server (free) with the cost of the supported RHEL (about $350, as of this writing). Now look at it from our point of view. There's part of me that thinks, "wow, that's unfair to Red Hat." But there's another part that says, "you're not giving me any CHOICES here, people!"
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AND ... even when you pay for support (as we do on the Barracuda Spam appliance), since it's not a unitized, self-contained package/system, the support people are likely to say, "oh, the problem's not with our stuff. It must be your mail server."
He asked me which mail server I was using. I said, "Scalix." He replied, "never heard of that one."
And of COURSE he recommended that we just buy Exchange Server 2007. Strongly implied: he could help us with that one.
(Which is the rest of the story to my other post here, and this is when I briefly considered taking him up on that advice. :) )
I go to the forum for that product (I *HAVE* learned not to even download and install something that doesn't at least have a support forum nowdays!!). I post, "I can't get the Gnarliewidgies to work."
The standard responses, in no particular order, will be:
1. "Works fine on my system." (Implied: your hardware sucks or you've done something wrong.)
2. "Ah, don't use that program, it's trash. Use this alternative ..." So you download and install it (after figuring out how to uninstall the first one). You discover that it will indeed work with Gnarliewidgels, but there's something ELSE that it won't support. Or, the interface sucks. Or, it hangs when playing 3 minute long movies with dancing chickens.
This is another problem: there's no one standard (as alluded to here in plenty of other posts). Even comparing Gnome and KDE is like apples and oranges in some respects. They're both desktop environments, but they have radically different views in some cases about how to accomplish what they're trying to do.
Ergo, et sum: you were a "#2." "Try this alternative." I *guarantee* that the original poster will try it and find what I've said -- that there's something else that it won't do.
This is the other problem: F/OSS users tend to be a bit more technically-inclined to start with. We will tweak stuff without even realizing that we're doing it -- so when we recommend it to someone who's less technically inclined, they're blown up.
We also tend to have limited requirements for the software that we install. Ex.: I've published dozens of articles to date, all of which were done in OpenOffice as .DOCs (because that's what the publishers wanteD), and -- believe it or not! -- KolourPaint to do the touchup on my illustrations. But for someone who needs to do more than I, this will be wholly inadequate.
... is my key principle. I'm capable of RTM'ing and Googling to find answers, but especially as I get older, I don't have the time I used to. Just yesterday, I was struggling with an Open Source mail server. Having to read separate (and usually incomplete) (not to mention incomprehensible at times) documentation on each component, THEN figure out how it all played together ... just to be honest, I briefly (briefly!) considered telling Corporate that we needed to just bite the bullet and go with an Exchange Server with full support.
Fortunately, I got this one working (again), and it's holding for now. But my #1 complaint is the lack of clear, easy-to-follow documentation. I love F/OSS -- I run Suse at home, and I've fallen head-over-heels for VirtualBox -- but this is my biggest complaint. We have a lot of brilliant coders working in F/OSS. We need to attract some equally-brilliant technical writers to donate time to explain how the stuff works in the real world.
Forget the books. Concentrate on being best friends. All of the advice about "communication" and "compatibility" and "caring" will fall right in line ... if you're best friends.
It has worked for us for 15 years. :)
Shoot, I'd be happy to get a reliable, reasonably-priced 1.5Mhz up and down here in Birmingham, AL, for our company's servers. You can get decent download -- 6Mhz is common -- but ATT is extremely stingy with upload. The ratios are typically 256/1.5, 384/3 and 512/6 on their DSL lines. Other technologies are available (such as Metro Ethernet, bonded T1 or business broadband through the cable company) but they're quite expensive -- as much as $1,000 a month. As a result, co-location is expensive, too. Right next door in Atlanta, about 100 miles away, all of this is available at reasonable prices. That's the difference that competition makes.
There are plenty of us in small-to-medium-sized businesses who use F/OSS software, and who'd love to "buy" it from the vendor. But the price disparity between the "free" download and the "supported" version is usually quite prohibitive for a smaller business.
We've been comparing groupware/mail systems. We have somewhere between 300-400 users. One company that we're looking at would charge over $1000 a year for this, and we just can't justify that. So ... we continue to use their unpaid "community" edition.
Here's the thing: after using the free community edition for a couple of years, we really don't need the 24/7 support. If we have a problem, we go into the (free) forums, or just figure it out ourselves. Paying $1000 for support that we'll rarely use just doesn't make good economic sense.
F/OSS proponents would then say, "well, at least make a donation." Businesses don't work like that, and PHB's certainly don't think like that at all. For one thing, unless the software vendor is a non-profit, you can't deduct the donation. We COULD deduct, say, a $100 "basic" fee for the software with little or no support.
Compare the price of the downloaded CentOS server (free) with the cost of the supported RHEL (about $350, as of this writing). Now look at it from our point of view. There's part of me that thinks, "wow, that's unfair to Red Hat." But there's another part that says, "you're not giving me any CHOICES here, people!"