On Wednesday 05 January 2005 18:56, Ashish Saboo wrote:

...

Terrence, I for one certainly look forward for a " Real Education " & this is the reason I am on this mailing list. Here I am

My earlier mail has been rejected due to size and i dont have a copy.

But in brief

1. we are talking and mixing multiple un related bussinesses and issues

Training for end users and sys admins / service guys / installers Linux windows integration (u require highily skilled personnel)

I don't think this point entered the discussion - it was merely about giving end consumers (not the cybercafes but their customers) familiar applications - and I think there is good reason to believe that end consumers have little idea that 'IE' and 'Email' are two different things.

Social change Law

How can we live around FOSS without comprehending the extent of social change this fosters? Seems to me that many here are still confused about this. I see no harm in raising issues and awareness now and then.

2. The individuals involved in piracy dont care. Their interests lie

merely in making a fast buck.

Cybercafe rates are not dependent - almost completely inelastic, I would venture to say - on software pricing. Telecom pricing and cybercafe rates are far more closely linked. The issue of piracy is only related (by me, in the original post, so please let us not get seriously sidetracked into general discussions of piracy) to an attempt to reduce the hafta percentage in the total cost of ownership. Nothing else.

3. Many in this posts seem to think that since piracy is the norm it

has to be acceptable.

In one sense, this is actually true - even law school will tell you that the pirate is defined by the lawmaker - when roles change, so do definitions. But once again, let us not get sidetracked. The discussion is about building a business case for FOSS services to cybercafes, and using the LUG meeting to explore this.

4. Many in this post think that people with poor tech skills are not

to blame for their woes.

How many PCO operators know beans about telephony? Or how many car owners about automotive engineering? Just as these two technologies have become ubiquitous, so can we help make general purpose computers running FOSS become ubiquitous.

Or not, if we choose to think the job is either unproductive or unremunerative. See below, the point about SLA's and wishlists.

Cyber cafe assoc describe your setup Get your members to accept that they will not use illegal software Tell us what is the SLA u want and the price u are willing to pay.

Wow! At last someone is repeating exactly what was asked in the original post: a meeting between interested parties (cafewalas and FOSSwalas) to thrash out exactly these points. Once a definition is posited, the issue of remunerative efforts and productive use of time becomes relevant and a range of charges can be agreed upon.

Rony Bill, Crishna et all Tell us your SLA and your charges Tell the cybercafe boys what hardware he should buy or better still what hardware u will sell him. What backend services and systems you will provide.

Some confusion here: I don't think either of us (at least not me) is in any business connected with supply or service of hardware. Why don't you google and find out for yourself before you start making a lot of assumptions?

All the hot air about social issues, poverty, personal gain metrics, difficulty of using linux et all will evaporate and put things in the right perespective Which is - the cybercafe guy is happy making his living at somone elses expense and our list cribbers are happy pretending that they dont need skills.

Let's not get more holier-than-thou than anyone needs to be. When the cybercafe owner is a pirate, the main loser (at least in India) is billy boy (unless cafes have illegal copies ;-) of Tally), but I doubt anyone on this list is going to weep copiously about that. Practically every other popular software application needed on Windows comes free, and is probably designed that way precisely because the vendor or developer wants it to be that way. All the cybercafe owner needs is a viable alternative (cost effective and workable) to M$ piracy for the present, I suspect. But this can only be determined at the meeting, not by the kind of occasional and casual guesswork that outsiders (ie, non-cafe operators on this list, including me) can perform.

Is the list expected to grow (and exponentially, let's not fool ourselves about which technology we are enthused by, and the way it is growing) or is it intended to be confined to a cosy little closed group of narcissists?

There will always be newbies, and there will always be people who only need to know the basics to get their work done, there will be people who know a lot and that is their work, and hopefully there will be lots of people who not only know a lot, but are willing to take that extra step to work and help others - at what cost, only an informed discussion can determine. I sincerely hope there will be people here on this list who are enthused by this chance.

My suggestion that we look at a coalition of interests (hardware - which is to say assemblers - suppliers, maintenance specialists, network specialists, integrators, buyers and finally end-consumers) that can exchange views on services, service levels and structures around which such services can be effectively marketed.

For instance (maybe it doesn't need a meeting to determine this, but somehow we humans do love being heard), maybe we can consider a formal or informal FOSS collective or guild, with rules or guidelines governing rates, SLAs and distro designs. Maybe it needs a small-scale business to do this. Why close our minds to the possibilities before they are even discussed?

But why are there so many list cribbers who seem to think that new avenues of making money should not even be discussed before dismissing the concept right away? How about some lurkers throwing in their two bits?