Re: [hylafax-users] [OT] Some comments

[Lee Howard <faxguy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Sam Przyswa wrote:

> There is in France more and more company who stop to work with the 
> OpenSource apps because the small company haven't developers to 
> resolve the kind of problems as we have and it's not possible to make 
> tests and failed try in the customer office, because the manager says 
> "No more OpenSource or no-commercial products, thanks !" 


The case that you presented was difficult, and would have nearly been 
impossible to resolve unless one of us had hands-on experience on how to 
do exactly what it was that you were trying to do (adaptive answer with 
new ZPX modems).  There was no shortcut to be had on the troubleshooting 
... somebody had to sit down, scour the modem manual, test various AT 
commands and initialization settings, figure out how to make things 
work, and fit them into the HylaFAX configuration files.  This would 
have amounted to a fair amount of time.

Most of us don't use adaptive answer.  I certainly don't have any 
clients that use it, and any time they suggest it I persuade them to 
forget about it.

So you're talking about someone needing to spend several hours on a 
project that isn't likely to be of much benefit to anyone but you and 
maybe a very few other people.  Imagine how few people there are in 
France using HylaFAX and a ZPX modem needing to do adaptive answer.

You run into those situations with commercial software, too, you know.  
And what you'll end up doing with commercial software is you'll call the 
publisher and you'll have one of those tech support fellows on the phone 
forever working with you until you can get it right.  They're pleased to 
do that for you because you already have a support contract with them... 
you and them have already come to terms with how that kind of situation 
is to be handled.

With free or open-source do-it-yourself software you don't have a 
built-in support contract that comes with the software.  Mailing lists 
and other free support forums are wonderful and great, but you're not 
likely to find someone on-list free-of-charge who is going to spend 
several hours of time on an issue that is very unique to your needs and 
is not likely to be of service to many others.

Don't get me wrong.  I and many others of us here are eager and happy to 
help our fellow users - but what you're asking for is simply too much 
for most people - we have jobs and families to take care of.  Complicate 
that with your aggressive approach on-list, and it's should be no 
surprise that you're still where you were two weeks ago.  As was 
mentioned a few times, there are many of us on these lists that are 
available for hire with whom you would be able to work out a support 
contract just as you would have done with commercial software.

Lee.


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