On Thu, 2008-04-17 at 22:48 +0100, Dave Crossland wrote: > On 17/04/2008, Ian Lynch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > Whatever. The important points are > > I agree with your points, apart from > > > If we can make money from certification we can use at least some of it > > to support producing free software and free learning content. > > I'm not sure certification is good;
Well, its an industry worth 750m a year in the UK alone. > I think its more worthwhile > learning how to get paying clients and route around the > certification-employment system... It's easy to say route round it but how? What are your clients going to pay for? If you say technical support services, that is fine but how do you then compete with the established players that have spent years and a lot of money building relationships with the customers? How do you generate a market for your services when very little exists and you are small with no investment resources? This is a strategy to get paying clients and to work out an alternative model for generating development resources other than selling software licenses. We are a small family business, we have a lot of experience installing technology in schools - some of the very first Linux thin client networks 5 years ago. We have extensive high level contacts in our target market built up over 30 years and extensive professional knowledge. It is learning from that experience that led to the certification strategy based on Clay Christensen's theories of disruptive innovation. The degree of success is still uncertain but I think far more likely to have wide impact than trying to sell free software systems directly to customers entrenched in multiple closed source dependencies or simply selling to those few that have already seen the light. We tried that. Anyway time will tell. I'll let you know in a couple of years time if it continues to work. So far we have set up a government accredited awarding body endorsed by the sector skills council for IT and telecoms, generated a business with an income of around 60-70k a year from scratch that scaled up will be better than 50% profitable. We have groups in South Africa, USA started, an EU project with partners in Germany, Portugal and Turkey and a big potential project in Eastern Europe with government and private investor backing. If the latter comes off and things go to plan we'll end up being one of the biggest sellers of Linux UMPC devices in the world. If it doesn't we'll still get a lot of kids learning about free software. Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org 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. _______________________________________________ Fsfe-uk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/fsfe-uk
