Installfest

[David J Patrick]

John McGregor wrote:

>- we should be selling memberships to GTALug, rather than the "high tech
>guns for hire" approach that some of the members seem to prefer.
>
I agree that mailing-list "support" should be primary, and the default.
However, from personal experience, I know that the mailing list may, or
may not, address issues that are important to me. The members are
usually knowledgeable and helpful, but sometimes a call for help can be
met with some flip response followed by tangential, off-topic banter,
that never addresses the issue. A new user may not have the time to try
the mailing list, give up, google furiously, read a bunch of unrelated
stuff, pour over man pages, try stuff, and come up with some kludgy
workaround. They may be hugely relieved to have access to someone who
will focus on their problem. Obviously, different users have different
needs/wants and I'm confidant that we, as a community, can address most
of them.

> It may
>well turn out that some of us do garner support contracts out of the
>experience, but that shouldn't be a primary goal.
>
agreed !

> One of the main
>detractions of Microsoft is their money grubbing reputation and we
>should go out of our way not to emulate that.
>  
>
By the same token, if we set up a lot of new linux users, without
considering their support environment, many will get lost , frustrated,
waste a lot of time, give up, run back to the borg, and never come back.

>
>My $0.02
>

+ my $0.02 = $0.04
djp
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