Jan,
	My company Rakekniven provides professional support
packages for our business line of PostgreSQL servers. But
this is in addition to our servers that we build and test
by hand. In other words, the servers that we warranty
have been thoroughly tested (a generation behind) and are
a combination of hardware/software that we feel comfortable
with. Needless to say we spell out in detail, in the
maintenance contract, what the limitations of the software
are and what actions we are willing to provide to the
customer, including, replacing the server.
	But you must also remember that all software companies,
including Microsoft, warrant only the media the software
comes on and take absolutely no responsibility for the
use (damage) that may arise from using the software. Take
a look at one of your professional software licenses and
read it. You will find that according to these licenses
that most commercial software is no better than shareware
(License wise).

	That's why, in the licenses, you see these big clauses 
that say this software is not suitable for use in Nuclear 
Power reactor's, etc... As an example, read one of IBM's
Mainframe License's, IBM only guaranties that the hardware
is free from all major defect's, without defining what those
defect's are. And IBM reserved the right to replace that
hardware at there discretion.

D. Gowin

-----Original Message-----
From: jwieck@debis.com [mailto:jwieck@debis.com]
Sent: Monday, February 08, 1999 9:12 AM
To: terry@terrym.com
Cc: hackers@postgreSQL.org
Subject: Re: Commercial support, was Re: [HACKERS] v6.4.3 ?


Terry Mackintosh wrote:

>
> Hi all
>
> > >     That's  the  reason.  One  of  the  biggest drawbacks against
> > >     Postgres is (for many companies at least), that you can't buy
> > >     support.
>
> IMHO ...
>
> Well, yes one can, one may just need to look around a bit... and pay
> commercial support prices.
>
> Example:
> As for my self I feel confident that I could provide such support, having
> been using Postgres+ since Postgres 0.95? (3?4 years ago?).  I charge
> $25/hour, but have been considering going to $30/hour. While I've yet to
> get a PostgreSQL specific job, I have had some other Linux based jobs.
>
> [...]

    Nice idea.

    But a word of caution seems appropriate.

    Commercial  support  doesn't  mean  only  that  you  can hire
    someone who takes care about your actual  problems  with  the
    product.  It also means that there is someone you can bill if
    that product caused big damage to you (product warranty).

    Commercial support doesn't mean only that you hire someone on
    a  T/M  base  (time and material). It also means that you can
    sign a support contract  with  a  regular  payment  and  have
    written  down  response-  and  maximum  problem-to-fix times,
    escalation levels etc.

    For these issues (and there  are  more)  you  would  need  an
    assurance  in  the  background  (or  a big company). But this
    requires that you have quality assurance management on top of
    the  development.  And that you have aggreed procedures where
    escalation  levels  from  your  support  activate  the   core
    developers  in  specified  times  to  solve problems.  And it
    requires that you have more  precise  product  specifications
    telling  what  the  product  can  and  where it's limits are.
    Otherwise you wouldn't be able to pay the assurance.

    There are already distributions of Linux out  where  you  can
    buy  commercial  support  with  them.  They  stay  behind the
    bleeding edge of development and are  offered  by  companies,
    that  have their own development team apart from the internet
    community.

    Looking at how we are organized (or better unorganized),  all
    this high level commercial support seems far away.


Jan

--

#======================================================================#
# It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than for being right. #
# Let's break this rule - forgive me.                                  #
#======================================== jwieck@debis.com (Jan Wieck) #



Mon, 8 Feb 1999 09:52:07 -0500 
Dan Gowin <DGowin@avantec.net>
RE: Commercial support, was Re: [HACKERS] v6.4.3 ?
Dan Gowin wrote:
>         But you must also remember that all software companies,
> including Microsoft, warrant only the media the software
> comes on and take absolutely no responsibility for the
> use (damage) that may arise from using the software. Take
> a look at one of your professional software licenses and
> read it. You will find that according to these licenses
> that most commercial software is no better than shareware
> (License wise).

That's not necessarily true.  While it is almost always true for
consumer-off-the-shelf software, there is plenty of software that
doesn't fit into that category.  Quite a few software companies will
sign support contracts (IBM is one) where they will take responsibility
for damage that may arise from the use of the software.  This is also
the case for many industrial software packages.  Granted, PostgreSQL
doesn't really fall into any of these categories, but these types of
warratees *do* exist.

-- 
Nick Bastin - RBB Systems, Inc.
Out hme0, through the Cat5K, Across the ATM backbone, through the
firewall, past the provider, hit the router, down the fiber, off another
router... Nothing but net.

Mon, 08 Feb 1999 10:06:12 -0500
Nick Bastin <nbastin@rbbsystems.com>
Re: Commercial support, was Re: [HACKERS] v6.4.3 ?