Thus spake Scot Desort
I think Brian is on the right track here. Perhaps 3COM can split their service contracts into 2 categories - firmware download only, and full support with download and telephone support.
They already have a software only support contract...its just as ridiculous as the rest of them.
Does any of this matter to those on this list that are complaining about 3COM's lack of timely response to code issues? Probably not. Should 3COM redirect it's efforts to resolving these issues? Yep. Should they perhaps head-up a small team (1 person) to field code enhancement and bug fix requests, both from an email/web input area on the 3COM ISP pages, but also through monitoring of this list and the totalcontol newsgroups? Absolutely. 3COM may already be doing this "behind the scenes", quietly tracking and logging this stuff, but it's apparent that the people who need to know the most that it's being done and being worked on, the ISP customers, don't know that someone has acknowledged the problem and it has been placed into an engineering queue.
I think that things like this would greatly improve 3COM's image among it's ISP customers, and even more so if they acted expediently on these issues that trouble so many on this list. Give the telephone support staff access to the database created as a result of these pages (hell, give us access to these pages as well, even WITHOUT a contract). Tie the ER/SR releases to the database, so it's easier to identify which bug is fixed with which release. And most importantly, allowing us to view this database to obtain the status of a confirmed bug and it's up-to-date progress in getting resolved would be of tremendous benefit. To know that someone is actually WORKING on Jeff's SNMP issue by simply searching the database is comforting (knowing that it will be fixed QUICKLY is even better). Some of this status information may already be in the 3KB, but a dedicated database for TC code issues and status reports would be really great.
I think Scot (it is just 1 "t" right?) has some very good points here that go hand in hand with my thoughts about beaurocracy (note the Subject: change :). 3Com does definitely work in a very behind the scenes, closed development environment. Don't worry 3Com, I'm not going to suggest you Open Source the Pilgrim code, however, perhaps 3Com could take some cues from the Open Source movement. By putting more layers of beaurocracy between the actual users and developers, there's just that much more insulation that filters out valid feedback. I reported that SNMP bug nearly 3 weeks ago and I have received *no* communication regarding it whatsoever. I've been holding off reporting it publicly waiting for 3Com to get a fix out for it, but I haven't a clue if that's forthcoming anytime soon or not. The last time I reported a 3Com bug it slipped through the cracks and made it through a whole new major release without getting fixed. Better communication between the developers and customers would fix this...if I knew that 3Com kept up good communication with someone who reported a problem regarding that problem and I weren't getting feedback about a problem I reported, then I'd know to call again and try again, or know to go forward with a public posting since it would seem that 3Com hasn't deemed it worthy to fix. However, given 3Com's unbelievably closed development environment, I haven't a clue if this thing is sitting in some engineer's queue somewhere to be fixed or not. (Even if it is in a queue somewhere, for a security bug like this, even that's unacceptable). 3Com needs to seriously open up to their customers here...remove many layers of beaurocracy (these two statements amount to the same thing), and get them more involved...maybe even make the engineering mailing lists and stuff publically available...get the customers in on the actual development process. Maybe making them publically available would be a bad idea (would end up with too much noise), but perhaps invite specific customers to join in? There are certainly a few people on this list that could give you some good feedback. I know...this is a pretty radical idea...maybe it doesn't need to go this far, but just something that one of my co-workers and I were discussing the other day. Regardless of how its done, 3Com *definitely* needs to open up to their customers more. When, in the course of 2-3 days on a mailing list, 4 or 5 *MAJOR* issues can be mentioned that are still unaddressed after about a year for each...something needs to be done. -- Jeff McAdams Email: jeffm@iglou.com Head Network Administrator Voice: (502) 966-3848 IgLou Internet Services (800) 436-4456 - To unsubscribe to usr-tc, send an email to "majordomo@xmission.com" with "unsubscribe usr-tc" in the body of the message. For information on digests or retrieving files and old messages send "help" to the same address. Do not use quotes in your message.