[TriLUG] Re: Gentle Reminder

[Brent Fox]

On Thu, 2002-08-29 at 14:25, Roberto J Dohnert wrote:
> First of all Brent, your man deserved it.  Treat me with respect and I
will treat you with respect, he failed to do so.  He decided he was
going to be a jerk so I responded in kind.

Wow, if I responded in kind to everyone that disrespected me, I doubt
I'd make it to work every morning, what with all the traffic and crazy
drivers and such.  When people answer ugliness with ugliness, the world
just becomes one big ball of ugly.

> Second of all, I in no way used Red Hat symbols or trademarks at All
in fact when I talked to your rep the last time he told me that if I did
preinstall and distribute retail versions I could not use any Powered by
Red Hat stickers on my machines or use Red Hat logos in my promotions, 
Which I have not done I will bring a couple of my brochures to the next
meeting to show you.  The only thing I say in my brochures is Sold with
Linux, the only excerpt that i put in my brochures regarding Red Hat, is
versions availabe Red Hat Linux and Open Linux Workstation.

I really don't know all the details of our licensing structure, but I'm
willing to bet that the salesman you talked to knows more than both you
and I on the matter.  There are policies regarding not just OEM's who do
preloads, but also people who resell the box set (i.e. I think you have
to be an authorized reseller).  If you were in violation of the
licensing policy, then he did you a favor by telling you so.  Many
companies sue first and ask questions later or at least send out a
cease-and-desist letter.  Maybe it could have been said to you in a
better way, but I don't know because I wasn't there.
 
> I have no problem with your Linux offerings,  I still do believe that
Red Hat Linux is the best distro out there to date.  I meant some of
your company reps suck.  If Red Hat had told me that to get support I
had to be a registered OEM I would have had no problem with going to
another company.  But what did they do.  One told me I could do it like
this, then a month later I have another one of your reps screaming at me
telling me that its unacceptable and that if I keep it up we are going
to sue you, thats where my problem lies I even gave him the name of the
rep that told me I could preinstall and distribute retail versions. 
Instead of saying okay I will check it out and give you a call back, he
tells me that no rep would ever say that. So he was calling me a liar. 
If he had gone to talk to the man, and he remebered me, which he would
have Im a hard person to forget, all hyper and jumping off walls all the
time and cantsit still for 5 minutes. call me back say okay sorry the
rep was wrong, hey no problems.  It is called courtesy and being polite.

If the salesman was rude to you, then that's not good.  All I would ask
of you is to stop and think for a second before you send out sweeping
generalizations like "Red Hat sucks" to public mailing lists.  We put a
lot of effort into making the best product we can, and I take it
personally when people say things like that.  I'm not saying we're
perfect, but Red Hat gives away more free software than any other
company I can think of.  You may have had a disagreement with a
salesperson or two, but trying to tear down Red Hat hurts the entire
community.

> I have no problems with your prices and your policies at all.  And I
have no problem with your product at all.  But you guys need to sit down
tell all your reps what the policies are so that you can avoid problems
like these to begin with.  If your reps dont know the policies and its
apparent some of them dont you will get conflicting stories.  I mean my
mother doesnt work for me but she knows my policies for my business in
fact she has lined me up two customers that I have to set up on Tuesday,
one told her that thay wanted Windows XP and she told them " Sorry my
son doesnt do Windows XP ".  So what they are doing is buying the
Machine and buying Windows XP and Im going to set up a Dual boot machine
for them.  But what if she had told them " Sure no problem " I would
have been messed up, its called positive communication.   But with Red
Hat, one tells me one thing another tells me another and the dude still
couldnt tell me if I could even sell the boxed Retail versions without
preinstalling them.  I dont really want an OEM partnership, my original
plan is to service all the linux community not just one version.  
Mandrakesoft has the same policy as Red Hat and their rep told me that
right off the bat so I left with no confusion.  Your reps gave me a
headache.

I'm not making excuses here, but my guess is that the reps most likely
don't know what the policies are in regards to system builders of your
size.  The salespeople are used to dealing with big OEMs like HP, Dell
and IBM, and the partner programs are geared toward companies of that
size.  To be honest, a company of your size is not going to be able to
generate the kind of revenue for us that somebody like Dell or Oracle
is.  Given that the salespeople have individual sales quotas they have
to meet each quarter, it's not surprising that they focus on the
customers who can create the most revenue for the company.  That doesn't
justify being rude, but perhaps that explains part of what happened. 
Maybe Mandrakesoft and SuSE have more experience dealing with smaller
customers and so their salespeople could give you a more straightforward
answer.  If their licensing is more suited to what you need then you've
done the right thing for your business by going with them.  


Cheers,
   Brent