Subject: Re: Commercial support for NetBSD...
To: Curt Sampson <cjs@portal.ca>
From: John Kelly <jak@cetlink.net>
List: current-users
Date: 06/15/1998 02:02:25
On Sun, 14 Jun 1998 18:13:17 -0700 (PDT), Curt Sampson <cjs@portal.ca>
wrote:

>I'm not sure I see a huge market for non-application based NetBSD
>support, since you're competing head to head with companies like
>Caldera. Why would someone who doesn't really know what he's doing
>want to choose NetBSD over Caldera Linux?

Well that's just it.  If they don't know what they're doing, and they
trust your recommendation, you get to choose for them.

I recently installed my first firewall for a business customer.  They
didn't know B-S-D from G-N-U, so they just took my advice.  It was a
lot cheaper than any big name solutions like NT or Cisco, and they're
happy because they spent less money for equivalent results.

Lower costs is what drove computing out of the glass house and onto
the desktop, and it's driving freed UNIX into businesses because of
people like me who can build cheap machines, add some free software,
and sell the package along with support, all at a price the big boys
can't touch.