Ubuntu commercial support is the same as Vista Ultimate?!?!

[me at mattgillen.net (Matthew Gillen)]

Grant M. wrote:
> Am I totally wrong, or should Linux support pricing be better than that
> to compete with Microsoft? Or more importantly, can it be better and
> still survive?

I think you're seeing what the market value of support is.  I don't think
support should be free or even cheaper than the market allows.  Here's my
hair-brained opinion:
There are two types of people who need support: those that aren't going be
contributing back to the open-source community (ie they're "just users" and
have no interest in the OSS community), and those whose time is very valuable
or that have specialized problems.

The OSS community doesn't get richer (in any sense of the word) by pandering
to the first type of person.  Linux may get more "desktop market share", but
that doesn't necessarily mean anything positive for linux.  Note that I'm all
for making linux so easy to use that it's idiot-proof, and no support would be
needed.

The second type of person has exactly the type of problem that allow
consultants of any specialty to exist.  I think this is a great business
model, and RedHat, MySQLAB, Sendmail, etc have all shown that you can be
successful by filling that niche.

Finally, the costs you mention aren't accurate:
> This is Microsofts Pricing:
>    Home - $99
>    Home Premium - $159
>    Business - $199
>    Business Ultimate - $259

Those are the product costs.  Lets take the Home Premium for example.  You get
90-days of free support from the day you activate your product (or the day you
place your first support request, if somehow you can't even get to the
activation step).  After that, it's $59 per incident.

Apparently they have "Professional Contracts", but it's not clear how much
they are.
(info on support from here:
http://support.microsoft.com/oas/default.aspx?ln=en-us&x=15&y=9&prid=10296&gprid=436922
)

Basically, you better be able to figure it out yourself, or it'll cost you an
arm and a leg, no matter what OS you use.
Matt

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