Re: [gnome-pro] Proposal for an official GNOME Support page

[Brian Cameron <brian cameron oracle com>]

Lionel:

I think this is an interesting idea.  However, I am not sure the term
"Support" is appropriate because this has special meaning to many
distros.  The GNOME Foundation itself is not really in a position to
provide or endorse general support.

However, the GNOME Foundation could surely do more to make GNOME
consultancies more visible.  Perhaps a website that is more clearly
dedicated to promoting exciting GNOME consultancies, perhaps with case
studies or other promotional material.  I would imagine that
consultancy support likely augments the support customers might get
from their distros directly, and this should probably be made clear.

I should think that The GNOME Foundation would want to make such a
website available only if there were a serious interest from a
reasonable number of GNOME consultancies.  Which GNOME consultancies
are interested and have material ready to provide to make such a
website happen?  We would want the website to make GNOME look good,
so perhaps a mock-up would be a good next step.

Such a website also has marketing implications.  I think this idea
and a mock-up should be brought up on the marketing-list.  The GNOME
Foundation is currently reworking the Friends of GNOME page with the
idea of adding more opportunities for logo placement for sponsors.  So,
if we are thinking about adding more kinds of logo or brand placement
on the GNOME websites, I think we should probably discuss these ideas
together as well and integrate any feedback.

While putting this on the Wiki would make updating it easy, it might
be better to integrate such a page more directly with www.gnome.org
or foundation.gnome.org.  While more work, a more official website
would likely be of greater value, and taken more seriously.  In
general, we do need volunteers to help with updating GNOME websites, so
it would be great if anyone from the professionals-list could help
pitch in to make these ideas happen.

Brian


On 10/ 5/11 12:16 PM, Germán Póo-Caamaño wrote:
> On Wed, 2011-10-05 at 12:33 -0400, Shaun McCance wrote:
> > On Wed, 2011-10-05 at 16:52 +0200, Lionel Dricot wrote:
> > > Dear board,
> > >
> > > As some of you already know, I'm interested by fostering the commercial
> > > aspect of GNOME.
> > >
> > > One idea to improve the situation is to create an official Support page
> > > on the gnome.org website which list available commercial support.
> > >
> > > We (the professionals-list folks) came with a proposal to create and
> > > maintain such a page:
> > > https://live.gnome.org/GnomeSupport
> >
> > It's not clear to me exactly what kinds of support we're talking about.
> > Which of the following would qualify?
> >
> > * We will fix bugs in the GNOME platform for you, or add features to
> >    accommodate your needs.
> > * We will create applications for you using the GNOME platform.
> > * We will address specific areas (accessibility, internationalization,
> >    documentation) in your application using GNOME technologies.
> > * We will fix bugs in the GNOME desktop for you.
> > * We will answer questions from your admins in large-scale rollouts
> >    of the GNOME desktop.
> > * We will answer questions from your users in large-scale rollouts
> >    of the GNOME desktop.
>
> AFAIU, all of them, plus some others, such as training (in the stack, in
> working with upstream, etc).