Etomite Support vs Microsoft Support

Posted by: Dean Aug 1 2006, 05:57 AM

This is just a reminder, that if you are not currently using 0.6.1 Final (Prelude), then you should upgrade ASAP.

Pre-061 Final installs will cease to be supported after the 13th of October, as this will have then been 6 months since we released the update.

We advise all users upgrade anyway, as there have been so many bug fixes since 0.6.0.

Please, also make sure you install any patches that are released too!

Sound like something Microsoft would do?

ROFL!

Now, now, children... be nice!

To be fair, the support on this forum is already "Hmm. That problem you’re having with DropMenu/Newslisting is odd. You should switch to Wayfinder/Ditto." etc.

So we’re probably going to "support" older versions of MODx by recommending an upgrade...

Sorry, I should have been more clear.

I was referring to the fact that they are announcing that they will no-longer support x product. Thats what Microsoft does...

Although we don’t really support older releases per say, we don’t say upgrade or no help.

(we don’t literally say that is the key point)

I completely got what you were making fun of, but I thought that it was unfair.

The other way of looking at it is that Microsoft actually promise support for a period of time after the release of the next version. That support comes in two forms: security/bugfix updates and the provision of information in response to requests.

We don’t *specify* a cut-off date for support, but it seems significantly shorter than 6 months.

So yes, Eto are acting like a major-league software company, announcing "you have two months of support left" rather than responding to each support request with "you should use the latest version". You are correct to draw a parallel. But there is an inference that this is a bad thing, and I just don’t get the joke.

Good point that Microsoft promises support for x amount of time. That didn’t occur to me when I drew the parallel.

Regardless, the joke was that Etomite is cutting support for a product that still a good portion of the user base uses (see the replies to that announcement...). That is what Microsoft does. (To be fair, they have many more versions of their software than Etomite has). Eto: 2 Microsoft: I lost count after 100.

Fair enough. I’m not familiar with Eto version numbers, but if I ever have anything installed with a version number that starts "0", I don’t expect support forever.

But yes, having now found the thread (which seems shorter than it might have once been), I see where you’re coming from.

In some ways Eto seem worse than Microsoft. At least by the time Microsoft pull the plug on support, the new version has had at least one Service Pack release to mop up the early bugs. I see from the very next post that Eto are effectively encouraging users to upgrade to a buggy version *knowing that SP1 is around the corner!*.

A fully patched version of the Etomite Prelude Final release will be available sometime in August... Anyone who will be upgrading may want to wait for the fully patched release... We will make an announcement when it is available...

Now THAT’s hilarious. To summarise the thread, it seems to say: "You must upgrade to this crappy distro with lots of known bugs in it and poorly written instructions for a needlessly complicated upgrade. Or you could wait for a slightly less crappy one that still has issues - but they’re mostly with the new third-party things it foists on you rather than the core, so it’s not our fault (even though we selected them and put them in the distro). It’s up to you what you do, but do it ASAP."
Or "Stop asking questions about the previous versions and ask us why the new version doesn’t work instead".