Re: Skolelinux participation at the Edubuntu Summit
> What prevents SLX Debian Labs (the commercial entity connected with
> skolelinux) from being counted as a company?
SLX Debian Labs or interactors.coop (the cooperative I represent) are
legally companies but they can't opt by themselves to this tender
organized by the Catalan administration, because the tender is only open
to homologated companies.
Public administrations tend to create such systems to save time and
diminsh risk (this is what they say) by organizing an homologation
process that assures that companies opting to big public projects are
technically and financially reliable, may demonstrate that have a set of
skills, curricula, etc.
In the case of this tender they are talking about 300.000€ for a two
year contract of development and support, and they are going to invite
just the homologated companies. We are teaming with some homologated
companies. Last november-december, when we started looking for
alliances, we were thinking on Skolelinux as a possible partner. Then
this looked too far, now it would be different.
On those days I was asking to the Catalan Debian community whether
Debian would need a lobby [1] to get in this kind of projects. There
were almost no answers (actually Sergio Talens-Oliag was one of the few
people that replied). I think the average opinion from the average
Debian enthusiast is something like "why you need a lobby when you ave a
free, stable, reliable Debian GNU/Linux distribution you can just
download and install". Which might be technically true... but as true as
then Novell or RedHat are much better positioned to win tenders and get
big projects.
On that time our answer was the Ubuntu Debian-based distribution, backed
by a Canonical Ltd you can meet and partner with, signing budgets,
agreements and other stuff completely usual in the commercial world.
An Edubuntu scenario with the participation of different projects around
Debian and Ubuntu makes it easier for small companies like ourselves to
opt to big projects where only Microsoft and their partenrs could ot in
the past and where Novell, RedHat, Sun, IBM, etc, are the current
competitors.
> Is it simply a question of how many millions you have standing
> behind you, or what is the issue? What kind of certification
> is needed?
In the Catalan case you need to fulfill a complex procedure in a
periodical deadline. Money plays a big role (money is security in
business, they say) but there are other factors such as amount of people
working in the company, projects done, skills, history, previous
contracts with the administration...
[1] http://www.lafarga.org/node/view/100 (sorry, In Catalan)
Quim
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