An open letter to ISC and their orphans (was: Re: SECURITY BUG...)

[Kevin L. McBride]

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 at 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