Landon,
I think OSGeo should limit itself to providing a list of service providers.
I notice that Frank has emailed a description of exactly that. I'm not
sure if that was a coincidence or related to this thread.
As you suggest, the remaining financial transactions should be between
companies and individuals from our OSGeo community.
Landon Blake wrote:
Cameron,
Are you encouraging individual developers and companies to offer
commercial support for the OSGeo stack? Are you encouraging the OSGeo to
offer these services or to have some role in providing them?
I think you are correct when you state that the availability of
commercial services that support the OSGeo stack would increase their
adoption.
I'm a little unclear about what role the OSGeo would play in this. Would
it certify or recommend service providers? I think we should be careful
about involving the OSGeo to deeply in any venture that would involve
the exchange of money. Money seems to bring out the worst in people. :]
Landon (A.K.A. - The Sunburned Surveyor)
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Cameron Shorter
Sent: Monday, April 30, 2007 8:28 PM
To: OSGeo Discussions
Subject: [OSGeo-Discuss] Commercial Support for the OSGeo Stack
I've just written the following blog about providing support for the
OSGeo Stack. Comments welcomed.
http://terrapagestech.blogspot.com/2007/04/commercial-support-for-open-s
ource.html
Overview
In this article I argue that commercial support for Open Source
Geospatial Software will increase its use and I propose how we as a
community should structure ourselves to provide the support.
Background
Open Source Geospatial Software is maturing is breaking into broader
industry adoption. We have:
1. Robust, stable high performance software components,
2. Strong Standards compliance and integration between components,
3. The OSGeo Foundation <http://osgeo.org/>, an umbrella organization
providing cross project and community links and standards for
organization and quality.
However, there are still things we can do to increase adoption of our
products from enterprise customers:
1. Make installation of the Open Source Geospatial Stack easier.
Users often need to install a number of different software
packages and their dependencies, all from different sources, in
order to deploy a Geospatial solution.
2. Improve our documentation.
3. Offer dependable and timely support. This is what I shall be
focusing on in this article.
Why pay for support?
OSGeo projects have a community of people providing extensive support
via email lists and IRC for free! And while developers may accept
payment for their advice, many have also stated their intent to continue
providing feel support. So why pay?
Lets study a typical user's experience. The user installs ~ 3 packages,
configures and sometimes extends some components. The user runs into
glitches and requests help. Each support request involves ~ 5 emails,
often with up to a one day turnaround. Some responses would be to point
the user to another email list. Sometimes the user's question requires a
lot of debugging and volunteers don't answer or take their time
answering. The user is delayed, or forced to fend on their own. The
user's key problems are:
1. Schedule Slip due to long support cycles.
2. Schedule Risk due to unpredictability of response times.
3. Budget Risk due to unknown support and customization costs.
Why offer support?
Support contracts are relatively small, have high response requirements
which impact internal schedules, and there is a high risk that customers
will overwhelm any fixed price contract. Why offer this service?
1. It is a good lead generator for larger consulting work. A company
that offers support is likely to understand the products they
support.
2. The OSGeo community as a whole will benefit from the increased
number of financial users which are attracted to using our
products.
Support Products
Below is a list of proposed products we should offer to match the
support requirements:
Development Contracts
Hire a developer to add functionality or customize an existing product.
This could be fixed price or hired per hour.
There are already a number of people doing this. Value could be added by
offering a head hunter service which finds quality developers for users.
Single Product, Second Tier Support
Offer second tier support for a fixed number of hours with guaranteed
response times for one product. Support will generally be provided by
email or IRC and offered internationally, so response times will usually
be one working day. This will typically be provided by respected
developers of the product.
Local, Multiple Product, First Tier Support
Offer local, first tier phone support for multiple products as an annual
fixed price service. This will generally be provided by local companies
who have general knowledge of these products and can answer 80% of
queries. These companies would engage Second Tier Support contracts to
answer difficult questions.
"We offer local support with international backing."
References
OSGeo <http://osgeo.org/>. The Open Source Geospatial Foundation is an
umbrella organization for the key Open Source Geospatial products.
Refactions Research Support
<http://www.refractions.net/servdetail/index.php?file=6-PostGIS.data>
Refractions Research offers daily consulting.
DM Solutions Premier <http://www.dmsolutions.ca/premiere/>. DM Solutions
offers first tier, fixed price support for a number of OSGeo products.
Motivations
As System's Architect at LISASoft <http://lisasoft.com/>, Cameron
Shorter <http://cameron.shorter.net/> aims to set up Australian first
tier support for packages in the Open Source Geospatial Stack, and
international second tier support for Community Mapbuilder
<http://communitymapbuilder.org/>. This article is aimed to trigger
discussion and encourage Community Members to start aligning behind the
above support groups.
Comments on this article will be welcomed.
--
Cameron Shorter
Systems Architect, http://lisasoft.com.au
Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050
Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254
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