Dear All,
I have been teaching ICT for four years in a secondary school in the UK and have always been an open source advocate. Unfortunately the picture I have seen so far is that most of the closed source software vendors (such as Microsoft, RM and co) have nearly 100% of the market.
It is actually extremely difficult to convince people of the benefits of Open Source, except for the part that "it is free" (no charge). The problem is not the price, but the guarantee of support when things go wrong. Hence, preference is given to closed source solutions.
Is there any process/certification for services providers that would guarantee a level of service so would make it easier to "sell" a project based on Open Source software ?
Thanks,
Laurent David
Hi, there are several levels of certification for varying products.
The LPI (Linux Proffessional Institute) has 3 grades of certs from admin through to advanced sever security, these are vendor neutral. Each of the majpr vendors have there own certs Novell Red Hat Ubuntu etc)
Sun Microsystems has released certifications for OpenOffice.org to sit alongside there other certs, these are comparable to Microsofts Office Specialist certs
PHP exams can be taken as well, this languge is the basis for man web apps.
eGroupware can have support purchased for it, as you can with several other enterprise grade apps. Most large OS vendors also provide paid for support if needed.
I guess it reeally depends on what you are looking for. If you want to do it yourself - then take the certification route, choose the route that you wish to take (server app web) and off you go. If you want a company then search for them, they are out there. Linux centric support companies provide a full range of services, some speciaize in education.
This is all off the top of my head so sorry for the random examples. Hopefully it shows that support is out there, it just isn't as obvious, on top of that, does responsibility lie with the support provider/software co if something goes wrong? If your more specific about your needs let us all know, perhaps someone can help practically.
BTW exactly what support do you get at the moment? If something goes wrong who do you turn to? A third party support company or the company that produced the product?