"Who I'm gonna call if the software has some bugs?"
It's certainly understandable, but it's also worth remembering that for almost any business the idea that they could call, say, Microsoft and get their bug fixed is pretty much a fantasy.
> ... the idea that they could call, say, Microsoft and get their bug fixed is pretty much a fantasy.
I don't know why you think this is a fantasy. I could call Microsoft right now and get an engineer within 24 hours to discuss an issue... I think that's our SLA. Might be a shorter time period for initial triage response. But typically we're talking to an engineer within a day. And yes, sometimes these discussions result in bug fixes in upcoming patches.
This is what first-class business support means. Large businesses want to be able to get someone on the phone to fix an issue, and they will pay well for it.
Microsoft (and several others, so they're not alone) has a pretty terrible reputation for their business support. It's something I can personally attest to when trying to engage them a few years ago with a mission critical systems problem for a reasonably large multi-million $ account at the time.
Note also the person you're responding to said "get their bug fixed", which is different from "get an engineer within 24 hours to discuss an issue". Discussing an issue can simply be a tick-off point for an SLA with no real substantial action behind the scenes beyond that.
Of course, you might have very different experiences so far too. :)
> It's certainly understandable, but it's also worth remembering that for almost any business the idea that they could call, say, Microsoft and get their bug fixed is pretty much a fantasy.
If you believe that, you've never been in an organization which purchased the topmost tiers of a support contract before from one of the big tech companies before. It's actually quite impressive.
While not for Microsoft I work for another organization in that size class and this is effectively my entire job. Customer opens a ticket, we engage, resolve, bug fix and deliver. It does cost a pretty penny but the problems go away no matter how vague the circumstance.
On the other side as much as I try to contribute with F/OSS support I'm not going to provide that same level of service as my dedicated job.
They just say: "You found a bug. Thank you. This product will move to extended support period in 10 months. We cannot promise to fix it by then, if you really need this bug to be fixed for you, you can pay us xxx USD for a hotfix." nuff said bug get never fixed, and will be present in newer product releases. So yes, it's just fantasy for CIOs.
it's also worthwhile mentioning that a lot of 3rd party companies provide support for open source products, it's paid support of course but most of microsoft's support options above the base level are far from free
Can confirm. One of my first programming jobs was with a company doing a lot of .NET work. They had the gold-tier support, or whatever it's called, but we never managed to get anything useful out of it.
Interestingly, IBM's WebSphere support team are one of the few commercial outfits I had good results from (a decade ago). Super expensive product, but for the environment at the time it was good choice due to the support people actually having a clue. :)
It's certainly understandable, but it's also worth remembering that for almost any business the idea that they could call, say, Microsoft and get their bug fixed is pretty much a fantasy.