Re: IDEA:Offical Debian Support Team?
> I believe that support for Debian is very important and is something that
> should be investigated. However, I believe that it may be difficult to
> combat an over-commercialized distribution if you start pushing for
> professional 24X7 commercial support. The kind of support that corporate
> business requires is of the commercial variety. List serves and news
groups
> don't quite cut it for the corporate world. But I don't see any reason why
> the HP's or IBM's couldn't include Debian as one of the distributions they
> support.
>
> Kurt
There's one major reason. You can't have a free distro to be what you want
it to be. If HP wants Red Hat to work on this or that, or 'help' Red Hat be
more compatible on HP's machines than on Sun's, it's feasible for them to
settle an agreement with Red Hat, SuSE gets less support from HP than Red
Hat, and Sun's gets less advertised than HP's.
Welcome to the corporate capitalism world. *sigh*
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Person, Roderick [mailto:personrp@ccbh.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, April 20, 1999 4:48 PM
> To: 'debian-user@lists.debian.org'
> Subject: IDEA:Offical Debian Support Team?
>
> Hey guys,
>
> I've noticed a lot of vendors jumping on the Linux bandwagon and and
> starting to offer support for thier system that run Linux. But, it seems
> that it is only for SUSE, Redhat, Caldera and TurboLinux.
> WHY NOT DEBIAN? Is it because we are not commercial? And if so, I propose
a
> Debian support team. I love Linux and Debian and I want to see it grow and
> live. But, it seems that if only the commercial distro get support Debian
> my lose developers and disappear. This would sicken me! I believe
> Debian to be the best of the distros (I have used Redhat and Caldera).
> Although it not what I call pretty (graphic set install and
adminastration), it is
> far more stable, flexible and all out better.
>
> This is something that concerns me and I would hate to see
> Debian lost because of not being commercial.
>
> Just thoughts. Any comments? Is this stupid or what?
This is far from stupid. It's not the first time someone mentions such a
thing. (In fact I did a few months back =)
First, the real problem with that, is that Debian is mainly
maintained/worked on/anything by volunteer *progammers*. (Developers,
coders, whatever you call it. Those who makes the .tar.gz that comes with
the .dsc and .diff) And not many of them (dare I say not a single one fo
them) is interested in giving 24h7d tech support to guys in a remote
country.
Second, Debian faces a few other troubles to enter the commercial world that
leads today's world is resumed in the three statements that follow:
Red Hat Linux was created so that the creator could earn more money.
Same applies to SuSE, Caldera (could argue it's been created to hurt
Microsoft.), TurboLinux, etc.
Debian, Stampede, Slackware (not sure, ain't really knowledgeable about that
one) have been created to answer their founders own personnal itch.
HP, IBM, understands the two first statements better than the last one. And
they knows how to make cash with Red Hat, how to get favors from them, how
to influence Red Hat.
Thirdly, let's say:
HP creates an idea to earn more cash.
If it can give more cash to Red Hat Software, it'll be in next's RHLinux.
If it's not worth the megabytes it's saved on, it won't make it in Debian,
and HP is losing money...
Christian Lavoie
clavoie@enter-net.com
UIN: 947212
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