On 13 May 2011 13:49, Marc Paré <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Ian > > Le 2011-05-13 05:27, Ian Lynch a écrit : > > Thanks for the info on the INGOTs. > > Having served on committees in charge of software acquisition, both at > local and provincial level, I find the greatest reluctance on adopting is > simply "networking". While many of our school districts would like to move > to LibreOffice, the vast majority rely on recommendations from their IT > departments which are MS certified. In order to provide greater acceptance > of our product we need to supply solid support from the point of view its > "network-ability". IT departments need to know that LibreOffice will work on > their network and if there are problems that help is readily available. If > there is no such service then the cost/seat is irrelevant -- MS Office is > then kept. >
Snag is that to provide such support requires manpower we don't have. A self-support network run by the schools themselves would be a possibility. Another issue is all the various different possible policies and set ups of individual networks. It's one reason why cloud computing makes a lot of sense for schools. So, in my mind, we (the LibreOffice membership) should establish efficient > "national" network help support. That is to say, for example, in my case, IT > departments would have support help from LibreOffice.ca. Have you the resources to sustain this? > There should also be "for profit" support available locally should IT > departments prefer to acquire this support. > Again is there a market that can support it? Here in the UK I doubt there is just on Office software. Possibly we are getting to the point where there might be in FOSS more generally. One of the reasons I set up INGOTs was that we had a company installing infrastructure and maintenance including some of the first Linux thin clients back nearly 10 years ago. It was a very difficult business to make financially viable. We could easily promote both support models on a national scale if we were > to have enough national developers attracted to our project alongside a > certification programme. Perhaps to start off, we could offer free > certification for dev's interested in the networking programming area of > LibreOffice ... just to "seed" such a programme. > I'd be willing to help with that, but the amount we could do would be restricted by lack of resources for our mainstream development. -------- > As a side note -- Dev's interested in the "networking", "connectivity" of > LibreOffice would also need access to a network "lab" of computers to > expand/trouble-shoot network related issues. LibreOffice could maybe > establish regional headquarters where it would fund labs where devs could > physically work on networking issues. Research and development funds could > be raised with this purpose in mind. > -------- All of this takes resources so its a bit of a Catch 22. Cheers > > Marc > > > -- > Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to [email protected] > Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette > List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ > All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be > deleted > > -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications The Schools ITQ www.theINGOTs.org +44 (0)1827 305940 You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to [email protected] Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
