Re: What do SMEs and consultants want from the debian project?

On Sat, Feb 18, 2012 at 01:21:51PM +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
> > > Typically, back-porting of items that interest the enterprise.
> > > Similarly, inclusion of items that interest the enterprise. Items c=
ould
> > > be: Code, Patches, New Features etc.
>=20
> Well, there's http://backports-master.debian.org and I'd be interested
> in uploading if it was wanted - is it that there aren't enough
> backports or is something different wanted?
>=20
> Are there particular archive sections which are more desirable for
> backports than others?

Honestly I doubt backports or rather a lack of them are a problem. Longer=
 term
security updates might help though.

> > How about SLAs?
>=20
> What services would we be looking to agree levels for?  What sort of
> levels?

Well we talking support right? I guess people are looking for all sort of
levels, different reaction time and different availability up to 24x7.

> but I think what canonical has at
> http://www.canonical.com/enterprise-services/support/server/service-lev=
el-agreements
> is within reach of small consultants. =20

But how do you want to offer 24x7 as a single consultant?

> all on one nice page at the moment.  One missing thing mentioned on
> those pages is 24x7 support, but I expect consultants could gather
> together to provide that if it's wanted.  Is it?  I'm pretty sure the
> co-op would be interested in partnering with support providers in
> other timezones to create a 24x7 service.

Interesting idea, but do you really thing one consultant per timezone is
sufficient? And if you get more, how do you make sure workload and revenu=
e gets
distributed in a fair way?

> But first, what does that body need to do?

Sign contracts and maybe even pay people to do some work. Let me give you=
 two
answered I personally received when talking with represantatives from big
companies in recent years. And no, I'm not going to name the companies.

One statement was: "Give me one company I can sign a contract with, so th=
ey do
all the support around Debian we need worldwide and I'll make sure Debian=
 makes
it onto our list of certified Linux distributions." I offered creating a =
network
to do this but he shot it down. They were not interested in worrying abou=
t more
than one supplier.

The other one explicitely asked me to send somebody to their support cent=
er to
answer all questions that their customers might have about Debian. This h=
ad to
be 24x7, so essantially we were talking about *at least* five people. And=
 just
in case you might wonder, it would have been up to us, not them to pay th=
ese
guys.

I really don't how to accomplish this with a group of consultants to be h=
onest.

Michael
--=20
Michael Meskes
Michael at Fam-Meskes dot De, Michael at Meskes dot (De|Com|Net|Org)
Michael at BorussiaFan dot De, Meskes at (Debian|Postgresql) dot Org
Jabber: michael.meskes at googlemail dot com
VfL Borussia! For=C3=A7a Bar=C3=A7a! Go SF 49ers! Use Debian GNU/Linux, P=
ostgreSQL


--=20
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