Re: FN-FORUM: help - OT

date posted 6th February 2008 12:16

On Wednesday 06 February 2008 11:50:18 Gary Short wrote:
> -------- Original Message --------
>
> > There is a real, genuine, non-zero part of an upcoming invoice to one of
> > my customers that is down to time spent trying to download and run WGA
> > so that I could try and install a Windows admin "freebie".
> >
> > (It failed to run.)
>
> That's nothing to do with MS though.

It's *everything* to do with MS introducing a thoroughly insulting "is this
car yours, Sir?" policy that makes everybody guilty until proven innocent
(on their own time and at their own expense).

> That's a customer of yours not
> managing to get things working and calling you in to help, you then charged
> him for that help. I'm sure there are stories list memebers could tell of
> customers having problems with Apache (say) and having to call them in to
> help and being charged for it. The cost of third party support applies just
> as much to open source software as it does to closed source software.



That was the point I was making until you started running around with the
goalposts. However an *additional* cost is dealing with the licensing.

All that mucking about with credit cards and licence keys costs a great
deal more than downloading and installing VNC (for example) or, better
yet, simply typing "apt-get install xvncviewer".