From: johnm@cory.Berkeley.EDU (John D. Mitchell)
Subject: Re: Miscellany (Re: 24-hour info line notes)
Organization: University of California, at Berkeley
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 22:29:12 GMT

In article <1946@bdrc.bdrc.bd.com> jcl@bdrc.bd.com (John C. Lusth) writes:
[...]
>The argument is not about pricing.  It is about support.  What originally
>was asked for was an Internet-based support system.

Ah... it's very definitely about pricing then.  How do you think that all
of that high quality support is going to get paid for?  GeoWorks works
under the traditional 'purchase-prices-includes-unlimited-support' model.
FSF (GNU) works under the 'basically-no-purchase-price-but-high-quality-
service-costs-a-lot-but-simple-user-to-user-service-is-very-cheap'.  I'm
not going to enter the endless arguments about the relative merit between
to two styles (or any other for that matter).

Internet support certainly would cost money (for the company).  Do you know
how much it costs to run even a limited feed into a company?  It ain't
cheap.  It takes computing resources and the staff to run them.

I will say this one last time and them I'm going to stop wasting my
breath...  GeoWorks is not a static (dead) company.  GeoWorks strives to
provide the best possible products and service at the lowest real cost to
the consumer with the resources (people, machines, money, etc.) that it has
available to it.  I've stated in the past that customer service is
constantly striving to improve it's ability to support all GeoWorks
customers.  Unfortunately (for those bringing up this thread), right now
there is not any official support among this 'free' channel known as the
Internet.  There may or may not be an official presence on the Internet in
the future (it's not my decision and I don't know anything more than this).
We'll all just have to wait and see.  If you really feel strongly about
this particular issue (or any other where you believe that GeoWorks could
provide better service) than by all means, please send your
ideas/comments/etc. to GeoWorks (postal mail is probably the 'cheapest'
:-).  [Note that all unsolicited ideas are assumed to be given 'for free'
(i.e., with no claims of ownership or any other crap like that).]

[...]
>Now Geoworks may be in a position where it must keep support costs
>down in this manner.  Fine. But let's be honest about it.

[Feathers ruffled] Where, pray tell, have I been dishonest?

>>You can always go buy a beefy machine and run all of the 'free' Unix and
>>DOS software out there (but Cygnus does charge a good penny for high
>>quality support) or you can keep your current PC and spend (certainly less
>>than $200) for GeoWorks Pro and some time on AOL or on the phone.  The
>>second options seems just a wee bit cheaper to me. :-?
>
>So what if it is cheaper?  It is apparently not cheap enough for some.
>That is what is under discussion.

Yes, I understand that buy at some point even the miracle workers at
GeoWorks have to be able to pay the bills.  Again, this is an issue that
people at GeoWorks are aware of (but you please remind them if you'd like).

Thanks for all of the patience and support,
					John
					johnm@cory.Berkeley.EDU

P.S.	Standard employee disclaimers apply.  GeoWorks speaks for itself.

P.P.S.	For anyone out there who thinks that I'm being harsh, please keep
	in my that if I didn't sympathize then why would I spend more
	time than I probably should away from my 'real' work to help out
	as much as I can in this forum?