[Debian-in-workers] Red Hat signs MoU with Kerala govt

[Soumyadip Modak]

On 6/7/07, Prasad Ramamurthy Kadambi <star.kadambi at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Anivar Arvind,
>
> On 6/7/07, Kapil Hari Paranjape <kapil at imsc.res.in> wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, 07 Jun 2007, Jaldhar H. Vyas wrote:
<snip>
> >
> > As far as the spread of Debian is concerned we can look at its strong
> > points which allow it to spread through BOFs, word-of-mouth, and more
> > volunteer resources.
>
>
>
> All that I like to supplement is that as pointed out in this thread, it is
> the organizational  structure of Red Hat, that is  vital in  Kerala
> government  going for it. Also I do not feel that Debian has any reasons to
> emulate a similar organizational structure. I also feel that what Mahesh T
> Pai is trying to convey is practical.
>
> Also Debian would have a good chance if some organizations are ready to take
> the responsibilities what Red Hat may have agreed with the Kerala
> government. There is hardly any reason for us to fret, as Red Hat is not our
> enemy. I would say this inspite me not being a Red Hat user. It is still a
> win for *Free Software*.  It would be good if Debian can have more
> volunteered organization support.
>
> Let Debian compete with its own merits.
>

IMHO volunteer support is unfeasible for large scale deployments,
especially a state-wide deployment. There is real money that has to be
spent to provide support, and providing support in exchange for a fee
seems perfectly fine to me.

Training and enabling people to support Debian deployments may be the
easy way out, especially if we do not have sufficient manpower to
attend to all the deployment sites.

IIRC Deeproot is based out of Bangalore and does provide commercial
support for Debian.

-- 
Soumyadip Modak
soumyadip.modak at gmail.com
soumyadip at ubuntu-in.org
http://soumyadip.freemind.in/blog