[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: Re: determining ID-ness in XML
We have different levels of change here. For example, there are bug fixes that get logged as Trouble Reports (TRs) and there are CRs (Change Requests) for new features not contracted for. We have to find a middle ground between satisfying only one customer given limited resources, or trying to satisfy everyone and go out of business. TRs we fix once we can prove it is indeed, a replicable bug. Every customer thinks they are the most important customer, and to them, they are. This is why CRM systems are important: communications needs support. The customer does have an advocate in the form of a Project Manager. For CRs, we also have a CR$ (CR Dollar) system. Each paying customer gets access to the CR list. Each customer gets a certain number of these CR dollars based on a formula. Periodically, they post these as a vote against the list. They can spread them out over a lot of requests, or vote them all to one. We count these from all customers and prioritize accordingly. This works remarkably well and our customers are very pleased with it. But we are not selling shrinkwrap. My guess is, the rules change for that, but wouldn't it be interesting if a company such as MS posted such a list and allowed customers to vote their CR$. Don't get me wrong. We have problems with MS, but when we compare them to other problems such as sustainment costs of core technology, the relationship is more than beneficial to our business. And I would not be surprised to see the operating system become an ever smaller and therefore "openable" part of the MS architecture. They have surprised us before. I was once told by very knowledgeable parties that MS would do markup just after hell thawed from the last freezing. They do have a pretty good learning curve. Sit down and do the numbers on SQLServer costs vs its nearest competitors sometime. At least MS understands that it is to their benefit to keep us in business and not license punitively. len -----Original Message----- From: John Cowan [mailto:jcowan@r...] Sent: Friday, November 02, 2001 1:30 PM To: Bullard, Claude L (Len) Cc: Champion, Mike; xml-dev@l... Subject: Re: Re: determining ID-ness in XML Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote: > Open source can and does work as you describe. Good > point, John. The rights I get out of a maintenance > contract depend on negotiation, money's offered, etc. > All software companies do not act exactly the same > way. Granted. I should have said "vendors of mass-market software": the contracts-of-adhesion type. > One can turn the open source > argument on its head though and say that if a > company has a sizable user base, that user base > can and does often act in concert or small groups > to get a BigCo to make changes Been there, done that too. It was just amazing, what happened in the (Xerox) Star User's Group when I announced the first (open-source, though I didn't know the term then) software ever available for Star other than from Xerox. Before then, the user group's mood had been basically "How the @#$* can we make Xerox reprioritize our bug list?" All of a sudden, it was "Can you write some software to do what we want?" I never got more applause for a speech in my life..... > and that getting > someone to keep their promises is the same > problem regardless of the software source. Not really. In one case, there *are* promises if you pay to arrange for them; in the other, the only promise is "AS IS, NO WARRANTY, MAY RUIN YOUR COMPUTER, PROBABLY WON'T EVEN TOAST BREAD" in insulting capital letters. (Yes, I know why caps have to be used.)
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