Author Topic: Software support  (Read 5641 times)

guzzi

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Software support
« on: May 16, 2015, 01:55:42 am »
I recently had a bad experience with software support. The latest version of a program will not start and throws a sys3175. I reported the problem, got no reaction at all to 2 emails. I directly approached the developer on IRC, he didn't have a solution at hand, didn't ask me to do further testing or provided a version of the program with bug tracking features. In other words, no support at all. I bought this program about 4 years and 3 versions ago. It may not be realistic to expect support over such a long period, then again, if the licence provides all future versions, they should be supported imho. If the seller is not prepared to extend support this far, he should state that clearly and offer a support subscription. This is just an opinion, and by no means an invitation to start a flame war. This is also meant as a reminder to ecomstation.ru that it is extremely bad business practice to completely ignore customers.
I would like to add that the software I bought written by Glassman has been well supported, with quick responses to bug reports and feature requests. So it's not all bad)

Martin Iturbide

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Re: Software support
« Reply #1 on: May 16, 2015, 06:03:57 pm »
Hi Guzzi.

Sadly, this is not a response, it also only an opinion.

I don't think that any software on this platform is on position to offer a great software support because of the size of this market. Also, software supports is an struggle everywhere, on MS, IBM, Oracle and even Apple. But you have the reason when you say that it is un-realistic for a software that you paid  4 years and 3 versions ago that offers great support. It is something similar to what is happening to Android today, you pay $1.00 for an app and you have eternal updates? That's sound strange, it is because the model will fail eventually and the developer will need to find a way to squeeze more money to keep developing the software.

Maybe:
1) If the developer does not have any more interest on fixing the software, maybe we can kindly request him to open source the software to have the possibility for someone else to fix it. It is very hard to fix close source software since it only belongs to one person.

2) Maybe you can share the problem with the community to see if there are other people that have the same issue and what comments they have about it.

This is why I like open source software, it may have bugs, it may not be perfect, but at least you have a chance (even if it is remote) that someone can fix it.

Regards
Martin Iturbide
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Roderick Klein

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Re: Software support
« Reply #2 on: May 17, 2015, 12:46:50 am »

<SNIP>
2) Maybe you can share the problem with the community to see if there are other people that have the same issue and what comments they have about it.

This is why I like open source software, it may have bugs, it may not be perfect, but at least you have a chance (even if it is remote) that someone can fix it.

Regards


Well actualy be very clear on how people need to share this. Asking questions in forums in most cases will not fix an issue. It does not realy have to do if something is closed source or open source!

First thing you should do is if you have a problem is read the docs. I keep hearing from Paul Smedley he gets little to no feedback to his ports.... Its a long standing complaint and people complain then do not hear much from developers..

Anyway since most software is developed for OS/2 is done free of charge you the user should bring a small contribution. To report the bug in the place the docuemation describes.  As in most cases technicall isssue's with drivers and software can not be solved in user forums. And you can not expect of developers to read forums all day as they do some of the coding in their spare time...

Roderick Klein
President OS/2 VOICE