Acquire Side Issues (3) - Support

• Distribution may not be backed by support

• Does not mean no one will support it.

• Mitigation strategies if no vendor support

  • Prime contractor? Due diligence? (see below)? Community reliance? Insurance? Self Help??

• “We will guarantee the same [service level agreements] for Linux that we do for proprietary OSes. Response times, fix times, uptime - we’ll sign all those same contracts for Linux.”

• Dan Frye Director, IBM’s Linux Technology Centre CIO Magazine April 03

• Compare “no warranty” provisions under closed source.