I am going to start this with some questions for you. Think about them and give honest answers to yourself. Have you ever called or e-mailed Microsoft or some other software manufacturer’s technical support about a problem as a user? What was your result? Did the technical support personnel begin with the assumption that you were the problem, not their software? In “the industry” this is known as Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair or PEBKAC (We “geeks” do love our acronyms.). Have you ever found a problem with some software that you knew was not due to “PEBKAC” and tried to get a response from the people that could fix it? Did you get a satisfactory conclusion?
I have done all the above both as a technical support person and as a plain old end user. I can tell you my results with Open Source people are much more satisfactory than my results with typical Closed Source companies like Microsoft.
Here is an example of getting results for a problem from Open Source folk as a plain old user. Recently my wife started an upgrade for one of our SOHO (Small Office / Home Office) computers from Mandriva Linux 2008.1 to Mandriva Linux 2009.0 over the internet. She was using the Mandriva GUI from her KDE desktop to do this. During the upgrade she ran into a problem with lack of space on one of the partitions that is needed for the upgrade. This caused the upgrade to fail while trying to download upgrade packages, although the upgrade software kept trying to get the new packages.
This has happened to me before so I had a work-around that I have used in the past to get around this problem. Of course it meant stopping the upgrade, doing some “arcane stuff” logged in as root (Known as “system administrator” for Microsoft users.) with symbolic linking at the dreaded command line interface, then restarting the upgrade. This time though, since my wife was affected by it, I had had enough of the problem and decided to do something about it.
After setting up the symbolic links to drive partitions with more space and restarting the upgrade I went to my PC where I have an IRC chat program always running and started asking polite questions on the Freenode IRC network in the #mandriva channel. Being polite is always my policy when dealing with technical support problems. One of the first responses was “file a bug report”. I took that advice, went to https://qa.mandriva.com/ and did just that. Within 24 hours of my bug report I received an e-mail notice that the bug report was accepted:
This report is considered to be a valid and complete bug report according to
the Mandriva Bug Policy. It is accepted on behalf of the maintainer.
–
Mandriva Triage Team
What followed was a satisfying “conversation” with the Mandriva Open Source team about the bug. They did not attempt to point fingers at me, blame my hardware, grind their teeth at the way I have my computers configured, or expound upon the phases of the moon to explain their lack of culpability for this problem. All things I have experienced with “professional” Closed Source support personnel. Well not the moon phases part, that is just my attempt at humor. No, the Mandriva Open Source folk handled my bug report quickly and professionally. I have no doubt that it will be resolved by the time the next Mandriva release is ready.
I will not go into my half remembered “horror stories” of my sessions with Closed Source technical support. I did not document those nor do I really want to recall them. I just remember a great deal of frustration dealing with Closed Source technical support when I knew the problem was their software. Sure, sometimes PEBKAC is true. But many times PEBKAC is used in “the industry” to explain away real problems with Closed Source software by support personnel. Getting an acknowledgment that a Closed Source software program has a real problem can be problematic to impossible for an end user. Certainly this could happen with Open Source projects as well. But to date I have never experienced a “brush off” from Open Source folk and I will be surprised when or if it does happen.
If you want to see my bug report and the responses from the Mandriva people it is at: https://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=46520
If you want to talk about your good or bad experiences with Open Source or Closed Source support feel free to post a comment here. But, do provide proof of your experience as I have done with this article. If you have no proof, then people tend to think it didn’t happen.
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on Jan 16th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
One thing that I can’t really understand in every Linux vs Windows debate is that one argument for using Windows is the support that in case of problem you can have. [expletive]!!!
on Jan 17th, 2009 at 6:59 am
What you described is a totally normal situation in the Open Source wqorld. Open Source means collaboration, which includes the user with every feedback he gives.
I have all the proof you want at my support forum (see URL above) and we also know that PEBKAC is the cause of most problems. But each PEBKAC can also be a feedback about where we can improve userfriendlyness and intuitivity of the software.
Getting a bug report is a positive situation for Open Source developpers while it seems to be seen as a negative one by closed source people.
That’s the difference.
on Jan 17th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Vasilis, I agree with you. One of the reasons I wrote this article was to partially debunk some of those claims.
wobo, you point out part of the problem with developer / support attitudes. You state, “we also know that PEBKAC is the cause of most problems”. Then you go on to state, “PEBKAC can also be a feedback about where we can improve userfriendlyness and intuitivity of the software”. This shows to an end user that you understand the problem is “userfriendlyness and intuitivity” but go ahead with placing the blame on PEBKAC, meaning the user. One cannot have it both ways my friend.
Readers, the URL wobo means is http://www.mandrivauser.de/ which is a German language site for Mandriva users. The official Mandriva user forums are found at http://forum.mandriva.com/ and have several languages available as well as URLs to other sites, like the one mentioned by wobo.
on Jan 18th, 2009 at 9:27 pm
[...] Why I Think Open Source Will “Win” In The End I will not go into my half remembered “horror stories” of my sessions with Closed Source technical support. I did not document those nor do I really want to recall them. I just remember a great deal of frustration dealing with Closed Source technical support when I knew the problem was their software. Sure, sometimes PEBKAC is true. But many times PEBKAC is used in “the industry” to explain away real problems with Closed Source software by support personnel. Getting an acknowledgment that a Closed Source software program has a real problem can be problematic to impossible for an end user. Certainly this could happen with Open Source projects as well. But to date I have never experienced a “brush off” from Open Source folk and I will be surprised when or if it does happen. [...]