7 ms·

I did not "make it up on the spot", I simply read their website: "Typically incidents are chargeable when they require work from us such as writing, compiling

by galdor 4y ago

I did not "make it up on the spot", I simply read their website: "Typically incidents are chargeable when they require work from us such as writing, compiling or testing patches, updating documentation, analysing or debugging your code, finding workarounds, providing technical advice or other significant effort. In particular, please note that we may regard fixes for bugs in its own Lisp products, and for shortcomings in the documentation, as chargeable." Source: http://www.lispworks.com/support/description.html#chargeable http://www.lispworks.com/support/description.html#chargeable Note how the list and following text clearly indicate that you can and will be charged for bugs in their own products.

lispm 4y ago
You wrote: > Of course you will have to buy a maintenance contract on a yearly basis… One does not have to buy a maintenance contract. It's entirely up to the customer if he/she does that. > but it does not include technical support. It will have to be bought with “incident packs” costing thousands of euros; because yes, paying for a product and a maintenance contract does not mean they will fix bugs, and you will have to pay for each of them. You don't have to pay for each of them. They clearly say that they "may" charge you money and they inform you if that is the case. I have been reporting many things and for most fixes (for their bugs) I didn't have to pay anything additionally. For a lot of those I got patches immediately, sometimes they told me that it will be fixed in the next release, especially if it was in combination of a new feature. For example I once complained that the terminal listener/debugger wasn't supporting UTF-8. That feature got added in some release later. If I would have wanted to have it earlier, I surely would have had to pay for it.
aidenn0 4y ago
I've never worked for or with Franz, but I have worked support. The cost of supporting a customer is relatively uncorrelated with any of the typical ways of charging for maintenance (e.g. per dev seat, company market-cap &c.). This leads to maintenance contracts that are very limited in scope. OTOH Companies really want a way to be guaranteed that you will support them. This often leads to some form of tiered support system. If you are not noisy, you can get away with a low tier. If you are noisy you'll be pushed to a higher tier. If you are rich and don't want to bother with that nonsense you just buy the top tier. Also there's a difference between "Thanks for the bug report, it will be fixed in the next release" and "Here's a patch against <whatever version you are using> 24 hours after we fixed it in our development branch". The former is free pretty much everywhere (bug reports are like free QA). The latter is going to cost money.
varjag 4y ago
If you go as far as to the next sentence: "…this policy reflects the reality that our engineers, quality assurance and support staff must spend time on providing expedited fixes outside of our normal product schedules." You still get your bug fix for free with the next release/update unless you need it expedited.

by galdor 4y ago

lispm 4y ago

You wrote: > Of course you will have to buy a maintenance contract on a yearly basis… One does not have to buy a maintenance contract. It's entirely up to the customer if he/she does that. > but it does not include technical support. It will have to be bought with “incident packs” costing thousands of euros; because yes, paying for a product and a maintenance contract does not mean they will fix bugs, and you will have to pay for each of them. You don't have to pay for each of them. They clearly say that they "may" charge you money and they inform you if that is the case. I have been reporting many things and for most fixes (for their bugs) I didn't have to pay anything additionally. For a lot of those I got patches immediately, sometimes they told me that it will be fixed in the next release, especially if it was in combination of a new feature. For example I once complained that the terminal listener/debugger wasn't supporting UTF-8. That feature got added in some release later. If I would have wanted to have it earlier, I surely would have had to pay for it.

aidenn0 4y ago

I've never worked for or with Franz, but I have worked support. The cost of supporting a customer is relatively uncorrelated with any of the typical ways of charging for maintenance (e.g. per dev seat, company market-cap &c.). This leads to maintenance contracts that are very limited in scope. OTOH Companies really want a way to be guaranteed that you will support them. This often leads to some form of tiered support system. If you are not noisy, you can get away with a low tier. If you are noisy you'll be pushed to a higher tier. If you are rich and don't want to bother with that nonsense you just buy the top tier. Also there's a difference between "Thanks for the bug report, it will be fixed in the next release" and "Here's a patch against <whatever version you are using> 24 hours after we fixed it in our development branch". The former is free pretty much everywhere (bug reports are like free QA). The latter is going to cost money.

varjag 4y ago

If you go as far as to the next sentence: "…this policy reflects the reality that our engineers, quality assurance and support staff must spend time on providing expedited fixes outside of our normal product schedules." You still get your bug fix for free with the next release/update unless you need it expedited.