[ This is a long message.  Please quote the minimum necessary to make your
point if you are replying publicly back to HP3000-L. :-) ]

No insult was intended to Adager or any other vendor by my previous posting.

I assume that vendors prioritize product modifications according to such
criteria as bug vs. enhancement, effort required, availability of workaround,
etc, and number of users affected.  *All other things being equal*, I find it
logical that "number of users affected" would be likely to move a modification
up or down in the priority queue.  And with HP (the company), the party line
has always been that the more people who request a given bug fix, the more
likely a fix will happen someday.  It does not seem unreasonable to me, IMHO,
that this same principle might also apply to third-party tool vendors.

The net (with its uninhibited discussion forums such as HP3000-L) has the
power to alter the traditional vendor-customer relationship in a win-win way
that benefits both sides.

Vendors benefit from feedback from more customers than just those who are
using traditional support channels.  Suppose x customers on support contracts
telephone vendor technical support about a given problem.  But there may also
be y customers on support contracts who figure out the obvious workaround on
their own (i.e. recreate ACDs after running the tool - duh), but are too busy to
deal with vendor technical support at the moment.  And there are probably also
z customers without support contracts experiencing the same problem who won't
contact the vendor at all because the customers knew at the time what it meant
to decline support and are loathe to call anyway and utilize vendor resources
that they're not entitled to.  Open discussion on the net by all customers
provides vendors the feedback from the y and z groups that would have been
unavailable Before Net.

Vendors benefit from learning about all of the unexpected ways (both good and
bad) their products are being used.  I don't think it's possible to predict
all of the myriad uses for a piece of software.  I could ask for a show of
hands from all HP3000-L subscribers who have ever read here about some cool and
nifty technique and thought "Hey, why didn't I think of that!", but I think
the results would cause mailboxes to overflow.  :-)  Customers benefit the
same way.

Vendors benefit from success stories from happy customers.  (I'm really
enjoying the current 3000 success stories thread.)  Happy customers with
heartfelt testimonials (in addition to the canned references a sales person
would provide) will in turn generate inquiries by potential new happy
customers.

Vendors benefit from fresh perspectives arising from public discussion about
bugs and enhancements.  Maybe the customers realize it's not really a problem
at all and so the vendor doesn't have to do anything.  Maybe one of the
customers will suggest a workaround unknown to the vendor, a workaround that
will be better suited to the problem site.  Or maybe the customers will decide
"Wait!  That's not the real problem at all -- here's what really needs to be
addressed", and so the vendor won't have to expend the resources on a
sub-optimal fix.

Vendors benefit from reduced technical support costs by customers educated by
online discussions and who no longer need to contact the vendor directly about
well-discussed problems.

Customers benefit by being alerted to problems that may not affect them now
but might in the future.  Vendors are generally pretty good about pre-emptive
customer notification about truly nasty bugs (i.e. security, data corruption,
etc).  But there's a severity line where it's not cost-effective for the
vendor to individually notify every customer.  Customer-to-customer
notification can deal with many of the problems below this dividing line.

Customers and vendors alike benefit when vendors who listen to these
discussions shape their products to meet the needs of their customers who are
doing the talking.

Customers benefit from vendors who embrace the net to offer more than just
brochure web sites.  The consumer activist in me would love to see all vendors
put their bug databases on the web for everybody to see, pre-sale, post-sale,
with or without support contract (yes, I know nothing is free and purchase
prices might have to rise to achieve this).  California requires excruciatingly
detailed disclosure prior to real estate sales (I know -- I just sold my
house), so why not the same for software where dollar amounts can be just as
high or higher?  So in the absence of public bug databases, it's only
natural for customers to talk amongst themselves in public discussion forums.

I could go on some more, but I think you get the idea.

One last thing.  I disagree strongly that posting to HP3000-L is a solution
avoidance strategy.  We pay for software and hardware support for all products
used at this site.  If we have a critical problem which interrupts the normal
course of business here, I will telephone the vendor directly.  But if the
problem is less urgent, or is for an application still in development and a
long way from production, or is really a "what is the best way to ...?" thing,
I'll post to HP3000-L first.  Why?  Because 1) I like the broad perspective
of real users in the real world, 2) I like encountering those "Why didn't I
think of that?" gems, and 3) quite frankly some customers are more knowledgable
than harried vendor technical support personnel.

I now return you to our regularly scheduled programming.  ;-)
--
Mark Bixby                      E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Coast Community College Dist.   Web: http://www.cccd.edu/~markb/
District Information Services   1370 Adams Ave, Costa Mesa, CA, USA 92626-5429
Technical Support               +1 714 438-4647
"You can tune a file system, but you can't tune a fish." - tunefs(1M)