Redwood City, CA Ð From warmhearted encouragement to outrage, NeXT developers have voiced a wide range of opinions about NeXT's decision to begin charging for technical support.
Effective August 31, NeXT will charge third-party developers $3500 per year and corporate developers $5000 per year for its new Developer Hot-line Subscription service, said Alexander H. Fitz, NeXT's manager for developer marketing programs.
The service lets developers ask unlimited questions for one year. Developers may also choose to pay per question or buy a "six-pack" of questions. Registered third-party developers receive a 30-percent discount on all services.
Developers who chose to pay per incident will not be charged for workarounds or if their problems are due to NeXTSTEP bugs. "It will be at the engineer's judgment as to whether what is being reported is truly a bug," said Elton Sotello, NeXT's manager of customer support.
The decision to charge for support comes after an analysis of the support logs for the past four months, said Fitz, during which time questions to the Developer Support Team had skyrocketed. "We found that a lot of people, since they had free support, put Developer Support on their autodialer," said Fitz, adding that many ques-tions could easily have been answered by referring to on-line documentation.
Other computer companies already charge for support. Microsoft charges $2500 for one year of technical support; individual questions are answered for $150. SunSoft sells six hours of "code-level consultative support" for $695.
When NeXT first alerted developers about the support problem at NeXTWORLD Expo in January, developers reported they would rather pay for timely support than have NeXT's high quality of support drop, according to Fitz.
Nevertheless, many developers are not pleased to have to pay for something that, until now, has been free.
"It's psychological," said Stephan Adams, president of Adamation, in Oakland, California. "I can understand why they're doing it: It's a revenue stream. They're keeping in tune with the rest of the industry."
Will Adamation sign up for the one-year subscription? "Heck no," said Adams, who added it was often faster and easier to get an answer from other developers than going through official support channels.
Other developers said they plan to purchase the new products. "We believe in developer support very strongly," said Jonathan Schwartz, president of Lighthouse Design, which recently moved from Chevy Chase, Maryland, to San Mateo, California. "They facilitate getting your app to market."
Small developers who haven't shipped their first product have complained the most about the new policy, said Jan Tyler, who manages the NeXTedge products and program group.
"When I first started OTI, I called the 800 number all the time. Now I wait until there is an absolute disaster brewing," said Alex Cone, president of New YorkÐbased Objective Technology, who added that he will subscribe to the new service.
Cone advised new developers to find informal ways to get their questions answered: "Find your local NeXT people and buy them a beer."
List Registered
developers
Developer hot-line subscription $5000 $3500
(1 year)*
Additional subscription contacts $500 $350
Single question $225 $160
"Six-pack" of questions $1300 $910
*Allows two designated contact people to ask NeXT an unlimited number of questions.