4 ms·

A common complaint about FOSS development or requirements is that you get what you pay for in terms of support. It's good to see that commercial offerings are n

A common complaint about FOSS development or requirements is that you get what you pay for in terms of support. It's good to see that commercial offerings are not much better! MS office is arguably the biggest piece of commercial software on the planet, and as this neatly shows, you still get bugger all in terms of support. I really dislike the embedded VBA "enterprise" Windows/Office world -- it either works, or you can hack it to work (CF the SO answers) or, if neither of those things are true, you are SOL...

syshum 5y ago
Commercial Support is more CYA for the people implementing technology, not a realistic way to get actual support It is way to shift blame, and responsibility
- jeremyjh 5y ago
  It is often used for that purpose, but I've opened cases with Microsoft premier support that led to a patch. Premier support is expensive but worthwhile in my experience.
mhh__ 5y ago
If you have an open source project and you really need it, don't pay for support (by default at least) - pay someone to work on it, for you.
na85 5y ago
>I really dislike the embedded VBA "enterprise" Windows/Office world -- it either works, or you can hack it to work (CF the SO answers) or, if neither of those things are true, you are SOL... Hah, I work in aerospace so I deal with a lot of security BS, and once had to address the fact that some IT techs were tracking the maintenance status of some TEMPEST-compliant security gear with a hacked-together VBA "application" that ran in excel over SMB shares. The password for the master database was (heavily) obfuscated but otherwise just hidden in plaintext in the tech-facing side of the application that ended up remaining installed on unprivileged machines that got loaned out to contractors, etc. The CISO agreeed that if the public has access to the status and configuration for your classified processing machines then that's a fairly concerning breach but was confused because the head of IT had told him it was all end-to-end encrypted...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
bcrl 5y ago
I recently learned that it's virtually impossible to get Intuit to acknowledge bugs in QuickBooks Online. And if they do acknowledge the bug, they close your ticket and won't provide any further updates (like if the bug will ever get fixed). At least with open source packages I can fix the damned thing myself if the vendor won't help out. If only the right to repair was actually enshrined in consumer protection laws...

syshum 5y ago

Commercial Support is more CYA for the people implementing technology, not a realistic way to get actual support It is way to shift blame, and responsibility

jeremyjh 5y ago
It is often used for that purpose, but I've opened cases with Microsoft premier support that led to a patch. Premier support is expensive but worthwhile in my experience.

mhh__ 5y ago

If you have an open source project and you really need it, don't pay for support (by default at least) - pay someone to work on it, for you.

na85 5y ago

>I really dislike the embedded VBA "enterprise" Windows/Office world -- it either works, or you can hack it to work (CF the SO answers) or, if neither of those things are true, you are SOL... Hah, I work in aerospace so I deal with a lot of security BS, and once had to address the fact that some IT techs were tracking the maintenance status of some TEMPEST-compliant security gear with a hacked-together VBA "application" that ran in excel over SMB shares. The password for the master database was (heavily) obfuscated but otherwise just hidden in plaintext in the tech-facing side of the application that ended up remaining installed on unprivileged machines that got loaned out to contractors, etc. The CISO agreeed that if the public has access to the status and configuration for your classified processing machines then that's a fairly concerning breach but was confused because the head of IT had told him it was all end-to-end encrypted...

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

bcrl 5y ago

I recently learned that it's virtually impossible to get Intuit to acknowledge bugs in QuickBooks Online. And if they do acknowledge the bug, they close your ticket and won't provide any further updates (like if the bug will ever get fixed). At least with open source packages I can fix the damned thing myself if the vendor won't help out. If only the right to repair was actually enshrined in consumer protection laws...