klm@gozer.UUCP (Kevin L. McBride) (02/19/91)
Reading this thread about the security hole over the last few days has really gotten my blood pressure up. My system, gozer, is a 486 so I was able to effectively plug the hole... as far as I know. I hope that's the only one. I have a further problem, though, and that is that while I am a so called "registered reseller", I have not heard one single peep from Interactive ever since I bought my first copy of the Workstation Developers package. This used car salesman, take the money and run attitude is going to be your undoing, Interactive. For the most part I like your software much better than SCO. I have been using both since 1988. I have many more technical complaints about SCO than I do about ISC. Your corporate attitude, however, sucks. All of the bug fix releases in the past year (tbl, X, ICC driver, etc.), I have heard about from my clients! This is ridiculous. The whole situation makes me look like an ass. Of course, I didn't agree to join ISC's protection racket. Being a so-called expert in UNIX, I felt that I could handle most problems myself. So far, I have been rather successful; I haven't needed any tech support from ISC at all. The one thing I didn't bargain for, however, was being left out in the cold by my vendor. I AT LEAST EXPECT TO BE NOTIFIED WHEN UPGRADES, PATCHES, ETC. ARE AVAILABLE! ARE YOU LISTENING, ISC???? Hey, Interactive, is this any way to treat the consultants who often are in a position to recommend one vendor over another? Like You or SCO? Smarten up, or I may just have to swallow hard and say "S-C-O" the next time somebody asks for a recommendation. They are a pain in the butt too, but at least they give the appearance of offering support. I had the same problem when I was an employee of a large company. During a product development phase we were evaluating both ISC and SCO. My group went with ISC as a development platform because our side-by-side evaluation (on identical hardware) determined that ISC's software was better suited for our uses, and just better in general, IN OUR OPINION. My former employer ultimately went with SCO as the platform for their iron because they seemed more willing to cooperate. As a potential large VAR and OEM, ISC wasn't willing to give us the support we needed to make a multi-million dollar decision. SMALL COMMERCIAL FOR DISTRAUGHT ISC USERS FOLLOWS Stop reading now if you don't like commercials. A couple of associates and I are going to start providing third party support and development (systems level stuff, device drivers, etc.) for ISC UNIX. We may even set up a support BBS if there is enough demand. The three of us have effectively been providing support to our clients for about two years anyway. We're now getting around to making it official that that is what we do. Interested parties are requested to send questions and comments via e-mail to support@gozer.UUCP, or uunet!wang!gozer!support -- Kevin L. McBride |Contract programming (on and offsite) |Brewmeister and President |X, Motif, TCP/IP, UNIX, VAX/VMS, |Bottle Washer MSCG, Inc. |Integration issues, Troubleshooting. |McBeer Brewery uunet!wang!gozer!klm |Reseller of ISC UNIX and Telebit Modems.|Nashua, NH