I was asking a question here which you could have found out if you had read my last complete mail - " How can we ensure non-commercial, timely and reliable support to organizations moving to FOSS solutions?".
It should be possible to build two kinds of support structures - (a) the local engineering colleges (at least a few of them) have students who are technically much more competent than so-called `support staff' of most big companies. Maybe, we might try forming some kind of `foss development cells' in these colleges and put them to work actively solving problems. Yes, there are lots of practical difficulties (students can't work full time, you won't get them during exam time, ...), but at least, what is wrong in trying this out?
(b) Even when you look at the commercial support angle, what is more sensible is developing enough expertise locally - kerala has an abundant supply of unemployed graduates - and most of them are not dumb. Why not think of training these people so that they can be gainfully self-employed as `FOSS technical consultants'.
When we think `commercial', let's not think of big companies. Lets think of small, local enterprises.
Regards, Pramode -------------
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