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On Jan 18, 2004, at 8:21 AM, Fredrik Lindgren wrote:
> I wonder if there is a business case for setting up a company
> reselling free software to get around sceptical management. I mean,
> without changing or really supporting the actual software, just
> charging for it. ;-).
>
I've had inquiries along these lines from the sales force of my
employer (whose customers tend to be conservative, mainframe-centric
shops). My newbie-to-the-mainframe-world response was something like
"why would they want to buy something they can get for free?" The
answer was basically that they want someone take responsibility for
evaluating and testing code, who they can call when something breaks
and be sure of an immediate response.
Not to get too far off topic, but "free" software is only free if you
have the people with the time and expertise to exploit it effectively
for your organization. There are plenty of companies out there who
find it cheaper to license software for $50K/year (knowing that they
can call someone on New Years Eve if it breaks) than to hire developers
at $100K/year who will turn off their pagers on New Years Eve :-) This
is one reason why mainframes still do the heavy lifting, years after a
paper and pencil cost/benefit analysis of the hardware and systems
software licensing costs would indicate that it makes no sense. This
probably applies to all sorts of expensive DBMS, ERP, and app server
software, not just mainframe shops.
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