[X2Go-User] X2Go vs. XRDP

[Stefan Baur]

Am 13.06.2017 um 23:20 schrieb Troels Arvin:
> It's about the support packaging:

>  - Donation-based support is very hard to get manager approval for.

We don't do that.  We're not a registered charity or anything like that,
so we can't even accept donations.  We're a company.  We offer support
and services (in various forms), and charge money for it, with proper
invoices.
You can sponsor a particular bug fix, feature development, or our annual
community event, if you like, and have your company listed as sponsor,
but still, you're getting a defined service for your money, and a proper
invoice with that.


>  - The other options are somewhat hard to explain to someone who's to 
> approve purchasing support, I think. I would suggest looking at how 
> Mathias Kettner's Check_MK support sells packages of "support 
> credits" (which run out after a year or so, so that the support 
> organization doesn't over the years build up a pile of obligations to 
> support credit package holders). The support credit packages may be 
> bought using a credit card form[1]. Then, when there's a need for 
> support, it costs X credits, based on the complexity of the case (which 
> might include feature-development.

Guess what, it's even easier with us.  You don't have to buy credits in
advance, you pay us on demand when you have an issue.  No contract
needed for that.

The only time when we regularly charge you money is when you sign up for
a support contract because you insist on getting a, say, guaranteed 4h
response time on all support issues.

If you don't need that, feel free to holler when you have an issue and
we'll respond with a quote (in "x hours equaling y EUR" rather than "x
credits equaling y EUR") as soon as we can fit your request in.  No
monthly fees, no upfront payment, only an invoice when you had an issue
you wanted us to fix.

I don't see why we should complicate things by adding an intermediate
"credits" layer. For each bug fix/feature development, there's a certain
amount of work needed that can be measured/estimated in hours, and
there's a hourly rate, so you can calculate the total amount it will cost.
This sounds more like a ripoff tactic to me - obscuring the actual
amount of hours needed to work on a problem behind some magic "credits"
calculation.  Basically, when we had a slow month, we could claim a
rather trivial issue would need 3 credits to fix, when it is actually
only 1 credit - and you, as the customer, would have no way of proving
us wrong.  On the other hand, if we tell you we need 5 hours to change a
known setting in your /etc/x2go/x2goserver.conf, you could rightfully
say "My 15-year old niece who's never touched a Linux system before
could do that in 5 minutes!"

You don't buy credits from a plumber or electrician, either, you pay
them by the hour after receiving a quote - same goes for us.

You have a need for a janitor that is available on call, but on average,
only spends 4 hours per month on site, you enter a contract that he's
getting paid for the on-call duty, plus for the actual 4 hours.  If
there's a month where he's working in excess of those 4 hours, you pay
him for the extra hours on top.  Guess what, same goes for us, too -
that's how our support contracts work.

And we do offer electronic invoices, however, as German law permits
this, only as protected PDFs attached to a GPG-signed E-Mail, nothing
more complex/fancy.

The only thing where I have to give you a definite "no" as an answer is
the credit card payment - it's too much of a hassle for us, as companies
actually prefer paying by wire transfer by far - a request to pay via CC
comes up every 1 or 2 years; that's just not worth the bureaucratic
effort required to accept CC payments.

Kind Regards,
Stefan Baur

-- 
BAUR-ITCS UG (haftungsbeschränkt)
Geschäftsführer: Stefan Baur
Eichenäckerweg 10, 89081 Ulm | Registergericht Ulm, HRB 724364
Fon/Fax 0731 40 34 66-36/-35 | USt-IdNr.: DE268653243

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