Re: Questions for DPL candidates: Support channels

[Chris Lamb <lamby@debian.org>]

Hello Ritesh,

> Debian as a project is different than others. Most other similar projects, have
> a commercial backing and interest. This puts the onus on them (other Linux
> distributions) to ensure their support infrastructure is simple, intuitive and
> supportable.

You raise some interesting points especially regarding fragmentation of
support. To be fair to Debian, even projects with "commercial backing" have
this issue. :)

I think we should judge ourselves on our results and not whether X or Y
exists. In other words, it doesn't matter whether the support is operated by
paid operatives or by the community, the key question is whether our users
are acutally getting the support they need.

However, it is very difficult to get concrete answers here. Anecdotes are
not data, but if we hear enough times that "Yeah, I tried using Debian but
my wifi/video/keyboard/smartcard didn't work, but it worked under Z…" then
we might start to question whether we are serving our users best.

Somewhat related; as I outlined in my platform, I intend to perform some
usability testing to identify our biggest bottlenecks in known problem
areas.

In general, I think we are doing *pretty* well and specific targeting of
managable support concerns (eg. security support for oldstable ie. Debian
LTS) have been shown to be effective. However, we will always be limited by
the number of hours we can dedicate to Debian on a volunteer basis.

Correct or not, providing support also has a reputation for not being very
rewarding, so incentivising developers to spend will regrettably remain an
uphill battle.


Regards,

-- 
      ,''`.
     : :'  :     Chris Lamb
     `. `'`      lamby@debian.org / chris-lamb.co.uk
       `-