Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!onfcanim!dave
From: dave@onfcanim.UUCP (Dave Martindale)
Newsgroups: news.sysadmin
Subject: Re: A fix for ftpd
Keywords: ftpd
Message-ID: <16867@onfcanim.UUCP>
Date: 8 Dec 88 05:43:10 GMT
References: <696@iraun1.ira.uka.de> <2978@ci.sei.cmu.edu> <271@popvax.harvard.edu> <22234@sgi.SGI.COM>
Reply-To: dave@onfcanim.UUCP (Dave Martindale)
Organization: National Film Board / Office national du film, Montreal
Lines: 37

In article <22234@sgi.SGI.COM> vjs@rhyolite.SGI.COM (Vernon Schryver) writes:
>
>If you have constructive suggestions on how a vendor could release free
>fixes for things like the sendmail or ftpd bugs without getting in
>trouble with the Internet Police, with customers who pay for support,
>with whose who don't have the target machine and don't want to pay for
>the bandwidth, and with those who pay the bills, please let me know.  SGI
>has found nothing that works.
>
>
>Vernon Schryver
>Silicon Graphics
>vjs@sgi.com

How about providing UUCP connections for sites that have support contracts?

I would certainly be willing to set up such a connection if SGI offered,
and in fact we do have a direct uucp connection to a couple of other
vendors.

If a major bug is discovered, the vendor could put the repaired
binaries into ~uucp or other "public" directory and then send mail to
sysadmins telling them it's there.  I'd even be willing to pay for the
phone call.

I realize that this would require a good-sized machine and lots of
modems for a vendor of any size.  However, I suspect it would be a
relatively small fraction of the money that is paid for support each
year.

Imagine the increase in customer loyalty if customers felt that their
vendor cared enough about them to inform them, individually, about bugs
and fixes. Currently, the customer has to waste the time required to
trip over a bug, verify that it was indeed the vendor's problem, call
the support phone number, wait for a return call, have the fact that
the vendor knows about the bug verified, and then wait another year
before it is fixed "in the next release".