14 Dec
2008
14 Dec
'08
8:34 a.m.
On Tue, Dec 09, 2008 at 04:06:04PM -0500, der Mouse wrote:
Amen to that. From what I went through with HP, the hardware support,
while expensive, was worth it. The software support was simply a waste
of money. We tried to do something with MC/ServiceGuard and LVM that
sounded reasonable to us, but ended in MC/SG blowing up. Hmm, call HP.
Calls go back and forth, we get updated binaries from the OS developers
for testing. Still doesn't work. Then they finally managed to dig up one
of the developers who actually seemed to understand the code. Turns out,
what we wanted to do is impossible due to design limits in the code.
Took us just about two weeks and plenty of back-and-forth calls and
testing to get to that stage. The fun of closed source and "vendor
support". And that was a situation where the vendor actually was
responsive (well, they better did since we paid for the (bloody
expensive) mission-critical support package).
With available source code, we could have found out about that in
a few hours and even possible have fixed it. *sigh*
Regards,
Alex.
--
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and
looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison
I know it all
makes sense from your point of view, but I'd ask that
you at least consider my viewpoint.
Okay, let's take this a piece at a time.
As an Architect in a Fortune 500 company, I see
many developers come
into our environment and promptly start wreaking havoc by writing
their own solutions for things already available:
* [...] Yes, some apps are horrid, but in
this environment, it's
often better to demand better quality from the vendor than try
to re-implement and support an internal app.
And what do you use in the meantime?
I went through my larval phase under VMS in the '80s. We submitted
numerous bug reports (SPRs, they called them) to DEC. The only one we
ever got anything at all back in response to was one which was my own
mistake.
No fixes. No patches. Not even an acknowledgement that the problems
were problems.
Later, I worked on a project with JPL, under SunOS (this was before
Solaris). They'd bought the right to access internal support techs at
Sun. By the time we had to call them, it almost every case (I think
every case, but it was long enough memory is going fuzzy) we knew the
relevant part of the system better than the tech we spoke with did.
I am deeply cynical about vendor support. With reason, I believe.