On Mon, 2007-10-08 at 23:09 -0500, leenix wrote:
- If I buy a piece of software that is closed-source, the company
selling it to me has to support it. If something is wrong with it, they'll fix it, because that's where they make their money.
I picked this up off /. just in time for this discussion:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071008-when-google-acquisitions-go-wr...
No need to answer question #2, just print off the article and hand it to the prospect.
Some companies make money off support, others do not. Selling support contracts is big business; it provides a steady revenue stream (since the revenue can be recognized over the life of the contract, unlike a software sale, which can only be recognized when the sale is made) that can complement the one-time payment for software. But a contract is only as good as the vendor offering it. Once the vendor no longer exists, the contract is useful only as confetti for someone's retirement party.
Even if the company stays in business, having a contract does not mean you will get support, as customers of Urchin found out in the article above. And if the company is a monolith like Google, who's going to have the resources to take them to court over it?