[hobbit] Informal survey about commercial support for Hobbit

[Reif Jeffery M]

A few things come to mind:

a)  Regarding guaranteed response, you could use 2 business days, which
is a common "basic" service level.  Guaranteeing 4/8/24 hours starts
costing a *lot* more as the time goes down, at least with support
agreements that I have been involved with.  Note that "response" means
acknowledgement of the issue.  A fix is on a best-effort basis.  From
what I've seen, you generally exceed that now.

b)  You may consider offering your product for sale, with or without a
support option:  Put together a one page quote that describes hobbit as
it exists today.  Same thing everyone else gets, just for sale.   For
those companies that "need" to purchase a product license rather than
just download some old thing off the internet ;).    If you work for one
of those companies, you know what I'm talking about.  No kidding.  I
don't think you would have a huge volume here, but if a few are
desperate to write you a check for $5000, then you could take them up on
it.  

c)  If you had a donation link, I think a lot of folks would be happy to
donate occasionally, a few $$ per month, or when they've benefited from
your work, etc.  Kind of like a 'tip jar'.  Does the Amazon thing allow
a monetary donation to an accout, or does anyone have expertise in
setting this up, like with a credit card?

d)  I have seen sites that use a bid system for solutions or
enhancements.  For example, I would like to have feature XYZ added.  I
would be willing to pay $10 for it.  Several other people would like it
too and could offer $5, $10, $20, or $0 for it.  You decide whether you
want to do it or not, but if you do, it would be worth that sum of
money.  I don't know if this method works or not.

I prefer method "c", and use it fairly regularly.  I would have used "b"
at a previous employer - back in the BB days, had it been available.  

Whichever system is chosen (or not), Henrik has demonstrated commitment
to this project; more so than any commercial vendors I've dealt with.
Thanks, Henrik.  And also thanks to the contributors in the user
community whose names pop up regularly.

Jeff





-----Original Message-----
From: henrik at hswn.dk [mailto:henrik at hswn.dk] 
Sent: Thursday, August 24, 2006 10:19 AM
To: hobbit at hswn.dk
Subject: [hobbit] Informal survey about commercial support for Hobbit

I've had a couple of enquiries about providing commercial support
for Hobbit. In essence they need a guaranteed response to e-mail
support queries, as a supplement to the mailing list where mails
do get answered, but not always within a day or two.

Making money off Hobbit never was my intention, but being paid for
doing what is really a hobby for me does seem attractive.

So this is just an informal survey: 

* Would you be interested in paying for Hobbit support? 
* What kind of support do you need? E-mail for solving problems,
  custom feature developments, or ... ?
* What response-time requirements do you have? Since I'm in Europe
  and a lot of the Hobbit users are in the US or Australia, I have
  a problem with same-day response guarantees.
* How much are you willing to spend on it ?

Feel free to respond here on the list, or to me directly.

Just to avoid raising any panic, let me emphasize that this will NOT
in any way stop or detract from the support I offer here on the 
mailing list. I think the mailing list will always be the primary 
support channel, and a place for discussing Hobbit developments,
beta versions and all the other related issues. It's just that some
companies feel more comfortable using software when there is a
"normal" support contract.


Regards,
Henrik


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