Re: [Visualpython-users] UPDATE: High School Network Security

[Gary <pa...@in...>]

Bruce Sherwood wrote:

> Frank Noschese wrote:
>
>> Hello again,
>>
>> Thanks to everyone that gave input to my Vpython installation 
>> roadblock. Like
>> Arthur said, this is not a situation which will be fixed by a little
>> "education." I asked the tech coordinator to outline the reasons why 
>> installing
>> open source is not in the school's best interest. Here is the reply:
>>
>> =======
>> "In Reference to our ticket #313, there are a number of reasons why 
>> we (the
>> technical team) decided that it would not be in keeping with the "best
>> practices" of the district to install open source software on the 
>> districts
>> computers and network. Four key reasons are as follows:
>>
>> 1) Lack of technical support from the 'vendor'. Since most open 
>> source software
>> is provided 'free' and is not maintained by a central vendor, 
>> technical support
>> is limited if not non existent. With this lack of technical support 
>> of the
>> software products in question, we have no way of getting help when 
>> the software
>> has a problem or is the cause of problems with the network.
>
>
> Technical support of commercial products is often rather poor. Given 
> the large community of collaborators on large open source projects 
> such as Python, it is possible that effective technical support may be 
> better, not poorer. 

Oh yes.  Case in point:  I used to use Mathcad (ten years ago ... things 
are probably different there now).  Most of my calls to tech support 
were answered with "You can't" or "That's just the way it works".  If I 
"call tech support"  for vpython or scipy or matplotlib, chances are 
that 1.) I'll get an answer  2.) If it's a bug it will get fixed within 
days if not minutes 3.) If it's a new feature it might show up in days 
if not minutes.

But everyone reading this already knows all that ...