[OT]Re: Books...

[Robert Fraser]

BCS wrote:
>   The authors would
> publish the material for free and then make it clear that they accept 
> donations and that they will put more priority on development activities 
> that help those who are supporting them financially. 

That's Oracle's model - "we'll fix bugs the bugs you want us to if you 
pay us to". That is, for an exorbitant fee, you can have the bugs that 
affect your system prioritized. (That's after charging $50k a seat for 
the software and asking companies to pay a full-time Oracle consultant 
to fix the numerous problems that add in their software to keep any 
other DBA from touching it.)

What this does, is makes the company put out a buggy, hard-to-use piece 
of software (since they'll make more money if they fix fewer bugs). This 
means product advertising becomes much more financially viable than QA, 
and they stick in a bunch of untested features hoping someone bites and 
then pays to get the issues sorted out.