SN Printing Under WIN/NT

[Mo DeJong]

On Thu, 5 Oct 2000, Paul Selormey wrote:

> Hello Mo DeJong,
> 
> > > [...]
> > Humm, if all of these companies are having problems why have they
> > not contacted us about a support/development contract to improve
> > the C++ parser support?
> 
> Please how much will it cost to contract you. I think many here will help to
> contribute that amount which will give us a good parser for C/C++ in parser
> and Java where possible.

The cost naturally depends on what you want fixed and how long
it takes to fix the problem. When you give away free software,
you need to charge for support and services to make ends meet.

> > Our current priority is Source-Navigator 5.0. If your company needs
> > some particular feature, you have the following options:
> 
> We have heard much about this, but it is not building on the current
> existing codes?

Source-Navigator 5.0 includes a large Itcl upgrade (1.5 -> 3.0)
but it is not a "start from scratch" rewrite like mozilla or
anything.

> What is new here? since no one seems to know what is going on except the
> RedHat
> staff.

We have purposely tried to add no new features for 5.0. We are
upgrading the core technologies we depend on (Tcl/Tk/Itcl),
but we are not adding a bunch of new user visible features.
I am not sure what you mean by "no one seems to know what is going on",
we have explained this on the list a number of times.

> > 1. Implement it yourself
> > 2. Contract with us to implement it
> > 3. Hire someone else to do it
> 
> Now, tell me SN used to be a commercial product. Was the principle the same
> too?
> If you buy it and it does not work the way you expect, then implement it
> yourself, pay
> us more to implement it and asked somebody to do it for you :-)

With a closed source product, you do not have the option to
fix it yourself or hire someone else to do it. You are at the
mercy of the vendor. This is one of the critical diffs of
an open vs closed code.

We are not saying that you have to fix the code yourself, but
you do have the freedom to do so. Would you buy a car that
could only be serviced at the dealer? That said, we think
people will recognize the logic of contracting with us to fix
problems or add new features, since we already know the code base.

cheers
Mo DeJong
Red Hat Inc