non-disclosure of infrastructure problem a management issue?

[Rui Miguel Silva Seabra]

On Sun, Aug 24, 2008 at 08:35:39AM +0900, Joel Rees wrote:
> It's one of the costs (and, actually, one of the benefits) of working  
> with open source. With "Proprietary" you have "guarantees". When they  
> fall down on the job, or when other bad stuff happens, you can  
> theoretically get some sort of compensation. But when you look at the  
> record, the compensation you get isn't worth it.

I think your view ignores the fact that you *only* get "guarantees" on
software if you make a contract for such, and even so they are called
Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

Software is copyright, so demanding "guarantees" is like demanding
guarantees from a book. It can't be done.

Now since SLAs may be bought regardless of the software license, you get
SLAs with any company which is willing to sell them.

Red Hat, for instance, is quite happy (I imagine) to sell you support
with an SLA.

> With opensource, you have both the responsibility and the privilege to 
> run your own install servers and backups. And you don't have the  
> guarantees that seem to fool the bean counters.

No, that's merely Free Software without commercial support. You get to
depend on your knowledge and the community's alone.

The nicest thing about Free Software is that this pretty much works
quite well, generally, and in special cases you can usually buy some
commercial support from someone.

With proprietary software you usually only get the commercial support
(and frequently it sucks) and there's little community (if at all).

I'm pretty much opposed to the concept of guarantees on software in a
general way, for it only favours proprietary software.

Free Software would have to certify any change in order to provide
guarantees, and that would kill the development model.

Rui

-- 
Fnord.
Today is Sweetmorn, the 17th day of Bureaucracy in the YOLD 3174
+ No matter how much you do, you never do enough -- unknown
+ Whatever you do will be insignificant,
| but it is very important that you do it -- Gandhi
+ So let's do it...?