On Wed, 08 Dec 2004 00:01:04 -0500, Louis Guillaume
<lguillaume@berklee.edu> wrote:
> Hello everyone,
> The feeling I'm getting is that this doesn't stand a chance because
> nobody knows about our fine OS.

Even if they *did* know about it, it is likely that they might balk
because of the administrative overhead of supporting Yet Another
Operating System.

Currently, my operation supports at least 7 different OSs: Windows XP,
Windows 2k, Windows 2k3 server, Linux (RH AS), Linux (Debian), Solaris
2.8. Plus, I think that some of our ancillary services might be
running yet another Linux distro (Gentoo).
This requires my sysadmins to have a good working knowledge of quite a
huge body of knowledge.
It's hard enough for me to remember that it's "ps -aux" instead of "ps
-ef" in the BSD world, and I've been using these systems for nigh on
20 years.

> Anyway - let's assume that their policy is un-bending. There must be
> "Commercial Support".

Remind them that "commercial support" does not mean "speedy
resolution". It means that someone *might* be able to help you.
Software support is a lot different than hardware support. It's not
like they'll be able to ship you a new build the next day, the way
Dell/IBM/Sun can send out a technician in 4 hours to swap tires to see
which one is the flat :-)
Moreover, ask them how many times you've had to call MS for support,
and how much good it's done you....

> Any help will be most appreciated.

This is probably less help than polemic, but...
 
> Louis

//jbaltz
-- 
jerry b. altzman    jbaltz@gmail.com
Thank you for contributing to the heat death of the universe.