Pramode C.E. wrote:
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?
I think the "FOSS Development Cell" is definitely a good idea. As many of you who were involved in the Summer Workshop in Angadipuram know, that a similar idea regarding Technical support teams had come up during the discussion there and the 'FOSS Development Cell' (FDC) would be taking that idea to a much wider region and scope. Currently one of the main issues is the proficiency of the local hardware vendors in GNU/Linux support. So, we need to introduce the local hardware vendors to the scene. They already have a small, still efficient support staff their own (Most of them are not well trained in GNU/Linux). In order to leverage this current setup we need a three tiered structure. At the very top level, we professional will given necessary technical and guidance support to the students of the "FOSS Dev Cells" in various engineering colleges. At the next level, these trained students can then impart this knowledge to the technicians of the local hardware vendors. If this is in place, then just as we do it now, these local hardware vendors can now provide assured service to all the technical problems that may be faced by the schools. This structure would be faster and efficient than any support that Red Hat staff can deliver in Kerala. In addition, this framework helps build community-level interaction, wherein people at the local level try to solve their own problems.
(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.
Professionals------>FDC--------->Local HW vendors--------->Schools
In the hierarchy, there already exist a financial link between the vendors and the schools. FDC can also expect some funding from the vendors as well mainly to support local community activities in respective colleges.
Regards, Pramode
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Regards, Sreejith