in reply to Re: Re: Perl Commercial Entities?
in thread Perl Commercial Entities?
The purpose of that email address is to document who wrote the software. But they have no obligation to provide support, answer questions, or supply fixes for problems. They also have no obligation to accept patches, treat you politely, etc.
In point of fact you are likely to get all this and more. But I assure you that if you tell the authors of the software that their generousity has obliged them to do anything in the future, they will generally not be very happy about it. This is something that they choose to do. If you treat them rudely you will find that they are liable to choose to be rather rude back.
By contrast companies truly are obliged to give support. And you will note that they generally do not give one drop more support than they feel they have to. IMHO that reflects human nature. People don't like being obliged to do things, and so do things they are obliged to do only grudgingly. People like doing things they voluntarily do, and are liable to go an extra mile...