[Zope] Re: DC and the PTK?

Paul Everitt paul@digicool.com
Fri, 01 Dec 2000 06:53:41 -0500


I'll answer your last point first.  If you've sent a note to
info@digicool.com asking for commercial support or consulting and not gotten
a response, email me privately and we'll get it cleared up.

For the past six months we've had our heads buried in the sand, slaving away
like starving dogs to get the investment closed.  Believe me, it was hard.
This also meant that we turned away a lot of work because we were maxed out
and not hiring.  We now have capacity and plenty, plenty of long-term
running room now to maneuver.  So if anybody wants DC for anything, well,
let's rumble. :^)

Your first question is also good.  The line between support and consulting
is awfully vague, but also very dangerous.

Support is only profitable if it's reasonably constrained and quantifiable.
If someone is able to get 80 hours of work off a single-incident support
ticket, then, errm, our effective rate wouldn't keep a lemonade stand in
operation. :^)

Thus, support is constrained to things that _should_ work (shipping
versions) in environments that we can easily reproduce (OS and RDBMS
combinations that we have internally.)

Again, we now have a lot more room to maneuver, so we'd really like to do
everything it takes to take care of people that want our commercial
services, be it support or consulting.

--Paul

On 12/1/00 1:50 AM, "Michael Bernstein" <webmaven@lvcm.com> wrote:

> Paul Everitt wrote:
>> 
>> I'll take the blame on this miscommunication.  I'm the one that told
>> Gary not to take support contracts on PTK.
>> 
>> We have a nearly ironclad support policy: we don't support stuff that
>> isn't official.  We won't support ZDiscussions, for instance.  If we had
>> to support everything we made available, then we'd stop making as much
>> stuff available.
>> 
>> Consulting, on the other hand, is a different story.  As Ethan noted, we
>> use PTK stuff in our consulting engagements, because we are directly
>> involved in the development of the solution and know where the bodies
>> are buried. :^)
> 
> Ok, then. What is the difference (or the line) between
> support and consultation? And on which side of it does a
> plea of "Please help me make this work, I've got money"
> fall? I've certainly been in the position of trying to get
> something to work, and asking "How much to fix this?"
> without even getting a response.
> 
> Michael Bernstein.
>