Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On 22/07/10 at 14:22 +1000, Russell Coker wrote:
> On Thu, 22 Jul 2010, Lucas Nussbaum <lucas@lucas-nussbaum.net> wrote:
> > > That's an interesting idea. But where is the money going to come from?
> >
> > This idea is likely to get so much people against it that it's not worth
> > discussing.
>
> Involvement of Debian funds would cause problems, but there are other options.
>
> We could have Debian maintain a list of consultants and companies that provide
> phone and Jabber support. Also a mapping of consultants to areas of expertise
> would be good (EG if someone happens to need some paid expert advice on Debian
> SE Linux ;).
We currently have 827 consultants in 64 countries listed on
http://www.debian.org/consultants/, which is pretty easy to find. It's
true that this listing could be improved, but still, it's there (also,
you are not listed).
> Maybe we could have an IRC channel where people could post questions like "I
> want to pay $50 per hour to have someone fix a bug in my Perl code on
> Debian/Lenny". If such a channel was available then I'd occasionally use it
> for my clients, early last year one DD got a small series of $US100 contracts
> through me that probably took him about 30 mins each to complete - that's a
> rate of $US200 per hour and the client was totally happy!
>
> With some of these jobs the faster the response is the more the client is
> willing to pay. If you can fix something within the next hour the client will
> often pay twice what they would pay to have it fixed tomorrow. In the past
> I've had ongoing requirements for rapid expert advice on Perl in Debian/Lenny
> and PHP with libraries backported to Lenny from Squeeze which I couldn't find
> adequate resources in a small enough amount of time.
So what you are proposing is that an entity would setup a service where
users would post support requests (or development requests), and
developers would, sometimes, pick up the offers and get paid for that.
While I would be totally against using Debian funds to set up such a
service, there's nothing preventing someone from investigating the idea
of creating a company that would provide that service without the
official endorsement of Debian. However, there are several problems:
- are there enough potential clients? If they are willing to pay, why
would they choose this instead of one of the 827 consultants we
already have listed?
- is it legally possible/easy to do? this would potentially involve
developers from many countries with different regulations.
- are there enough interested developers?
This doesn't seem very different from bounty-sponsored development. It
has been tried before. Why did it fail?
L.
Reply to: