Re: [XPOST from WDSCI-L] Webfacing out, EGL in

Aaron Bartell wrote:

the support from the development team is very, very good, as

is always thecase with IBM development.

You have direct access to the authors!

Pig bladders.

IBM provides this level of support for all their products. When it's in
development state and you're on the beta team, you get access to the
authors. You can also get support from Alphaworks. When it goes GA,
you have standard IBM support in addition to the fine folks who frequent
these lists.

IBM support is better than open source support, and that's been my
experience for nearly 30 years, back to the System/38 days.

Well, you do pay for IBM support. I agree it is normally top notch. But 10
years ago it was even better. When you'd call for support and get right to
the Dev team and they'd have you running odd commands you'd never seen,
messing with internal codes, not having any idea what you were doing... lol

"Now, on the display you'll see a bunch of hex stuff. Move your cursor down
5 spaces, and over 11 and change the X to a B."

Even on my new 515 I had an attention light (from a power outage, my
mistake, I turned off the UPS accidentally while trying to silence the alarm
in the dark). I messed around with WRKPRB and 10 seconds later I got a call
from IBM support and they told me what to do. Now THAT was top notch!

Now you may have to go through a few more hoops it seems. But it does still
get done.

We can certainly agree, though, that open source (and I'll even add
"freeware") support is normally sub-par or riddled with "guesses" by wannabe
know it alls. It's usually when I decide to not use Linux anymore because I
just can't get an answer. (Ubutnu, though, is 1000 times better than the
last distro I tried a few years ago, but still not ready for prime time).
Same experience using dd-wrt firmware on my routers. Great software, but
getting answers was like pulling teeth.