On Sat, Aug 18, 2018 at 12:16:23PM +0200, Nico Schottelius wrote:
>
> Good morning,
>
>
> Jaromil <jaromil@???> writes:
>
> > On Sat, 18 Aug 2018, Daniel Reurich wrote:
> >
> >> Below is my response to Martin from Barzahlen.
> >
> > Thanks for the reply, I think is pretty good. I also suggest that Nico
> > from ungleich contacts Barzahlen to offer some sort of enterprise
> > support formula, as they may prefer German speaking partners on this.
>
> Will do.
>
> > As Daniel mentioned in his reply, Devuan has no "commercial"
> > frontend.
>
> I have been thinking about this for a (short) while, too. Still
> unfished, but some thoughts from my side:
>
> - current state
> While we at ungleich are very committed to Devuan and clearly
> happy to support our favorite distribution, we have strong opinions
> about centralisation / monopols. Thus as long as there are no other
> commercial players for support, we are very happy to take the lead and
> offer a safety for users/companies.
>
> - the future: cooperation instead of competition
> However, if (and we hope there will be) there are other entities
> offering commercial support, I personally would like to see something
> like a "network of Devuan supporters" that offer commercial support.
>
> While this idea is at an very early stage, I imagine a significant
> different model than the usual "one distro, x support companies
> fighting for the customer" model.
>
> Instead I'd thrive for something like a mixture of a foundation
> ("people with similar spirit") and a commercial entity ("we all have
> to get money for Internet, electricity and food.") that might even be
> (tightly|loosely) coupled to dyne.org / Devuan.


I would add my 2 cents to the discussion, if they are worth anything.

While I agree on the fact that commercial support is somehow important
to allow Devuan to thrive and reash out to other niches, I am conviced
that there is no need for such support to be provided by Devuan
itself.

Debian has been around for more than 25 years, and has never provided
any official commercial support. Nevertheless, dozens of third-party
entities provide support for Debian-based systems. This has not
hindered Debian's adoption in the enterprise segment, and most of
those companies which sell Debian support end up giving back to
Debian, in a way or another.

Although I might like the utopistic proposal of a sort of consortium
of Devuan support entities suggested by Nico, I know that in practice
it can't work. Companies exist to make a profit (and there is nothing
bad about that), and in the end they unavoidably end up competing for
that profit (and there is a lot bad about that, IMHO). Unfortunately,
it's not a matter of "people with similar spirit", because if we talk
of enterprise support we are not talking any more of people or
ideals. It's about contracts, and how many of them you can secure for
your company before another one would do the same.

I would go for keeping it simple: Devuan should mainly be developed on
the basis of voluntary work, which is something that produces quality
that no company can guarantee and ensures a commitment which no
company can pay for. Devuan could provide a list of companies that
offer Devuan support, without implying any official endorsement
though, since that would require a lot of effort on our side in terms
of guaranteeing quality and equality, and will soon become a source of
problems and tensions. We could/should encourage those companies to
"give back" to Devuan in a way or another, e.g. by providing server
time, or covering the expenses of a dev meeting or a conference, or
what not.

Devuan has arrived at this point against all odds, without any
official commercial support network. That was made possible by the
concerted actions of a community acting for a much greater good than
the small interests of single entities. Let's keep it like that. Let's
keep it simple and fun. Let's keep it easy for people to work for
Devuan one night after the other, without the need to feel for a
single moment that they should get anything back for their Devuan
work, because they know that there is no price for quality and
freedom.

And, believe me, Devuan will survive, and thrive, and succed, and get
companies supporting it, and bestow us with a little miracle after
another ;)

My2Cents

KatolaZ

-- 
[ ~.,_  Enzo Nicosia aka KatolaZ - Devuan -- Freaknet Medialab  ]  
[     "+.  katolaz [at] freaknet.org --- katolaz [at] yahoo.it  ]
[       @)   http://kalos.mine.nu ---  Devuan GNU + Linux User  ]
[     @@)  http://maths.qmul.ac.uk/~vnicosia --  GPG: 0B5F062F  ] 
[ (@@@)  Twitter: @KatolaZ - skype: katolaz -- github: KatolaZ  ]