[NCLUG] local end-user support

[Paul Hummer]

>> Commercial support for OSS systems might seem to be more expensive than
>> that from commercial software vendors (or ir might not), remember:
>>
>> To the commercial software vendors you are a revenue stream. You pai for
>> the software and will presumably keep paying for the upgrades and
>> perhaps future products. They want to keep you "on the hook", and will
>> therefore provide support at cost or perhaps even for less. "Support" is
>> a word that refers to their entire profit structure.
>>
>> Somebody supporting an OSS product sees no revenue from the initial
>> product, has no hope of future revenue from upgrades or other products
>> and must therefore support their entire business including overhead,
>> taxes etc. on the revenue of the "support".
>>     
>
> And that's exactly why it just doesn't work.  People are not used to
> paying extra for support, it's bundled, so it's "unnatural" to pay extra
> for it.  Look at what a turn-off "per incident" support from Microsoft
> is.  The support business model for end-users is well established, and
> changing that mindset of end-users would take a lot of effort and time
> to change.
>
> Regards,
> Mike
>   
I think what Chad was getting at is not necessarily support from the 
vendor, but third parties.  If my grandma didn't have a son and a 
grandson that are both employed in the computer field, she wouldn't be 
calling Microsoft, even if it's free.  She'd be taking it down to those 
boys at Best Buy who have to wear a uniform with pants that don't go 
down to their shoes.  If the medieval computer company actually 
supported Linux, that would be very exciting, because I wouldn't feel so 
bad putting linux on my grandma's computer (so when she clicks on that 
link that says "Click here to win an iPod" she's not infected with 
ungodly amounts of spyware), and when she has needs and I don't have 
time, I could send her to computer ren, er, that place.  She's got quite 
a lot of wealth behind her, she it wouldn't be a problem, but then she 
could at least make her system go a little longer before replacing it.