[PLUG] Coordination and Planning

Colin Kuskie ckuskie at dalsemi.com
Wed Apr 24 23:33:44 UTC 2002


On Wed, Apr 24, 2002 at 02:10:25PM -0700, sendai wrote:
> 
> Advantages of the method described below:
> 
> The possibility of money attracts better talent.
> We could still get corporate partnerships, but getting sponsorships is
> unlikely.  	Investments would also be possible.
> With an actual income we could have a full time staff which would make
> schools more 	comfortable in making a switch.
> We could more quickly expand to other markets before MS made their audit
> demands or whatever 	other plan they come up with.
> 
> Disadvantages of the method described below:
> 
> We could not get as much public support, since many would see us as having
> an agenda.

People will think you have an agenda just because you use Linux.  Not
many will begrudge you having a job, especially if 

1) you don't tie the schools to an exclusionary contract or license.
2) you can show reduced public school spending.

Consider it this way, how many Linux jobs will 1/10th of the Oregon
Public School license with Microsoft create?  The company would have no
intellectual property to protect or products to sell (since they're
most likely selling services configuring networks and K12LTSP), the
Linux community in general will benefit (people on payroll will be
full-time testers/developers when not doing support) and schools would
save tons of money.  The worst the company could do is put itself out
of a business after converting the entire school distict, but then I'll
bet that there's a substantial market in the small business and
organizational sectors and "franchising".

By the way, it's not that I don't personally like a volunteer model,
but paid people are on the hook for getting things done.  This is the
kind of thing that businesses and organizations pay attention to.

Colin




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