On Mon, 2007-06-11 at 14:50 +0530, Sandip Bhattacharya wrote:
Strictly speaking, support is not about creativity. Yes, sometimes it might involve a bit of creativity in solving certain problems, but mostly the problems are common and repetitive. So, while I am not disputing that "creativity can flourish without commercial incentive", I feel that is somewhat of an irrelevant point in this discussion, and any further discussion on that lines would only take us away from my question here i.e. How can we ensure non-commercial, timely and reliable support to organizations moving to FOSS solutions?
What I wrote is: "The prevailing wisdom says that unless there is a commercial entity, things won't work properly. This is a result of another piece of prevaiing wisdom that people will not do anything without a profit motive." The idea about creativity, in my opinion, is related to this. That is why I mentioned it. But I did not relate it to this issue. People tend to think that unless there is some profit involved, unless there is a business possibility, things won't work -- whether it is innovation, whether it is support.
My experience with users groups however points to the fact that LUGs are not always suitable for providing a support environment to organizations -
There could be problems. But commercial support is also not of very high quality. Our experience is that we don't get support when we need it, the support personnel think that we are idiots, but these people often know little. I remember a guy who came to add a CD writer to a computer we had. The user had little clue about how to do it, and I think the guy who brought the CD writer had less. He tried to push it into the slot from the inside, and failed. He even removed the mother board in the process. He finally left the computer in a broken condition -- it did not boot. Another guy who brought a new computer to be installed, asked me whether I wanted "original Linux or pirated Linux" to be installed. I have several experiences like this. Generally, the bigger the company, the worse the service! Our LUGs, FSUGs and GLUGs had offered support to the IT@School project, though I don't know how effective it has been everywhere -- especially from the side of the teachers. But, I think, with experience, things can become good. Especially because these UGs are themselves interested in promoting FS and hence would try their best.
Best