[Mageia-discuss] commercial support

[Wolfgang Bornath]

2010/9/24 Maarten Vanraes <maarten.vanraes at gmail.com>:
>
> A distro is used by alot of users, and sometimes also by companies. Companies
> using a distro are in favor of having support on it.
>
> Instead of commercialising Mageia, i would propose that a page be provided by
> people who are willing to provide support on Mageia to companies. (more or
> less like debian)
>
> I am not saying a separately branded enterprise version is off the table, i'm
> merely stating that at the start of this project, it may instill some
> confidence in our project if companies could see that some kind of support will
> be available.
>
> It could be as simple as a page with a simple list of contributers(non-novice)
> stating that they (or a company they are in) are willing to provide commercial
> support for Mageia, with a link to their site with contact info for it.
You seem to forget what "commercial support" and catering to companies implies:

1. Catering to companies is only possible based on contracts with such
companies. Only a legally set organisation (no mattter if that is one
person or a organisation of several people) can do that. So, if Mageia
offers commercial support the whole Mageia organisation is involved,
not only a group inside Mageia and the rest has nothing to do with
it..

2. Catering to companies or offering commercial support involves
liability, secured by liability insurance. No company signs a contract
for commercial support or consulting without including warranties and
liability.

3. If such a support contract is signed Mageia has to fulfill that
contract, which is not possible if all people just work for Mageia on
a volunteer unpaid basis - you can't force volunteers to do something
at a set time - what if a company has a contract for 24hrs response
(that's what companies want) and there's nobody available who could
answer the questions because it's weekend or some holiday? You can't
force volunteers to be on alert 24/7 but you have to if you offer
commercial support.

Yes, that's a lot of IFs but such things do happen.

If there is a group of people who want to do commercial support then
set up another organisation outside Mageia, so Mageia is not involved
in such contracts.