[business] Ægir Support Services

Sun Aug 30 17:32:10 EDT 2015

I've contacted some local cooperative specialists, and it looks like there
aren't any limitations to the location/nationality of cooperative members.
All that appears to matter is where the head office is. As such, I'd like
to move forward with incorporating as a cooperative here in Québec. I'll
start a new thread to discuss this in more depth.

Christopher Gervais  :|:  Principal,  Ergon Logic Enterprises
514.945.6442  :|:  christopher.gervais at ergonlogic.com

On 28 August 2015 at 10:19, Christopher Gervais <
christopher.gervais at ergonlogic.com> wrote:

> I've been working on a draft of the support offerings, and have come up
> with this, so far:
> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1h9prbW0Z65Ykt5hPWAhzXsiDbpPesuw0ddM6w-cNMYw/pubhtml?gid=0&single=true
>
> Feedback is obviously most welcome.
>
> Also, should we consider adding training services?
>
> Christopher Gervais  :|:  Principal,  Ergon Logic Enterprises
> 514.945.6442  :|:  christopher.gervais at ergonlogic.com
>
> On 19 August 2015 at 02:44, Christopher Gervais <
> christopher.gervais at ergonlogic.com> wrote:
>
>> We appear to be in agreement that the Ægir Project should be offering
>> support directly. We ought to focus on the Ægir distribution itself,
>> including golden contrib. Support for the rest of contrib, or anything
>> custom, should be referred to member and partner agencies and consultants.
>> A finder's fee (10%?) on this referred work seems fair.
>>
>> I rather like the simplicity (and pricing) of Proxmox's subscription
>> model <https://www.proxmox.com/en/proxmox-ve/pricing>. Basically, it
>> scales on the number of support tickets, the level of engagement (forum,
>> portal, SSH), and the scale of deployment (CPU count). The Best
>> Practical RT Support Model
>> <https://www.bestpractical.com/services/support.html> is similarly
>> structured, but adds emergency and phone support at the top end. Seeing as
>> how Ægir already caters to both individual developers, and large
>> institutions, we'll probably want a blend of both models.
>>
>> Tech support is a well-defined discipline that usually get's divided into 3
>> or 4 tiers
>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_support#Multi-tiered_technical_support>.
>> Since our goal is to help maintain and develop Ægir, the core team should
>> focus on tiers 3 (bugfixing) and 4 (re-factoring and re-architecture),
>> while coaching experienced tier 2 (troubleshooting) and first-line tier 1
>> (diagnosis) members.
>>
>> My preference is for a cooperative business model, which would support
>> the independence of its members, but I'm open to other suggestions. I'm not
>> certain how or whether multi-national membership works here in Canada, but
>> I'll look into it, if there's interest. The alternative would probably be a
>> consortium, but I'm not very familiar with how they're structured. Either
>> way, we'll need some basic governance.
>>
>> I also prefer to keep our internal operational overheads to a minimum. We
>> should simply subscribe to RT, Askbot, etc., thus supporting fellow libre
>> software projects whenever feasible. Contracting a bookkeeper, accountant
>> and other professionals, allows all workers to focus on our competencies.
>>
>> Christopher Gervais  :|:  Principal,  Ergon Logic Enterprises
>> 514.945.6442  :|:  christopher.gervais at ergonlogic.com
>>
>> On 14 August 2015 at 19:03, Cameron Eagans <me at cweagans.net> wrote:
>>
>>> I'm interested in taking smaller things as a freelancer. I don't work
>>> through a company for Aegir stuff.
>>>
>>> We might be able to solve the ticket allocation problem pretty easily:
>>>
>>> - Everyone goes into a queue
>>> - First ticket that comes in goes to the first person in the queue or
>>> they can refuse it
>>> - That person goes to the end of the queue and the next person gets the
>>> next ticket and so forth.
>>>
>>> Personally, I think it would be a good idea to sell support tickets
>>> through the Aegir project as a funding mechanism, rather than pass off an
>>> entire client. Maybe we (the project) could ask for some percentage of
>>> income generated from the support tickets?
>>>
>>> Cameron Eagans
>>>
>>> On 8/14/15 3:51 PM, Guillaume Boudrias wrote:
>>>
>>> I'm obviously interested as well, and I can commit in Praxis' name.
>>>
>>> We've already committed to working on Aegir issues one day a week, so
>>> I'd also be glad to be a part of a more sustained maintenance initiative
>>> if we can make it happen.
>>>
>>> I'm assuming we're talking about a sort of centralized support ticket
>>> system here (and not really large support contracts) so correct me if
>>> I'm wrong.
>>>
>>> I foresee differences in how we want to implement the support plans, but
>>> Praxis is still in the experimental stage in that regard so we can
>>> probably shift to any reasonable way of doing things.
>>>
>>> Another crucial point is how tickets will be distributed. I'm guessing
>>> that most everyone involved will want as many support tickets as
>>> possible, and we want to make the response time as short as possible
>>> (which means we won't have time for debate). I don't have any specific
>>> ideas on this point but to me it seems like the most sensitive one.
>>>
>>> Looking forward to seeing where this goes,
>>> -Guillaume
>>>
>>>
>>> On 14/08/15 05:18 PM, Herman van Rink wrote:
>>>
>>> On 14-08-15 06:51, Christopher Gervais wrote:
>>>
>>> The main takeaway from the Ægir Summit confab with Richard Stallman is
>>> that we ought to be offering support to finance ongoing maintenance
>>> and development of the project. "We" here being the Ægir Project
>>> itself, whether directly or indirectly.
>>>
>>> This makes perfect sense. It should open up a market that has
>>> heretofore been vastly under-served: commercial and institutional
>>> users who have neither the budget to hire consultants, nor the spare
>>> time, staff or desire to become experts themselves.
>>>
>>> Before, at and since the Summit, many project and community
>>> contributors have talked about forming a consortium or cooperative to
>>> offer such support. Let's agree to move forward with this, declare our
>>> interest in participating and sort out how to proceed. I know that I'm
>>> eager to see this move forward.
>>>
>>> I believe it is important to build the service around offering
>>> support. This should, in turn primarily finance the generally
>>> unappealing work of maintenance and documentation. Developers like to
>>> work on cutting edge features, and consulting clients are often
>>> willing to finance such work. However, fixing bugs, writing and
>>> curating good documentation, code refactoring and cleanup are all very
>>> difficult to justify spending IT budget on.
>>>
>>> Many active Ægir project and community contributors already offer
>>> hosting and/or consulting services, including me. This endeavour must
>>> not seek to undermine these established niches, but rather benefit
>>> them by growing the market, and generating and referring /more/
>>> consulting and hosting business.
>>>
>>> In fact, these very individuals and organizations, that already help
>>> to drive the project forward, are the ideal participants in such a
>>> venture. I invite all of them to join me in making this a reality. You
>>> can start by declaring an interest to participate, and adding your
>>> thoughts to this discussion.
>>>
>>>
>>> I'm in.
>>>
>>> I do however value my independence.
>>>
>>> A Support Services could set baselines about what a client could expect,
>>> while still leaving room to individual members to utilize their personal
>>> strengths.
>>>
>>> The 'easy' way from our side would be to direct a new prospect client to
>>> one of the members, and let any contracts be directly between them.
>>>
>>> For a client it might be more comfortable to get a contract with the
>>> project's support organisation where they don't have to care who does
>>> the work.
>>>
>>> The last thing I would want is bad feelings between members, so we'd
>>> have to devise some clear guidelines on who is responsible for what and
>>> where the money flows.
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> Met vriendelijke groet / Regards,
>>>
>>> Herman van Rink
>>> Initfour websolutions
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> business mailing listbusiness at aegirproject.orghttps://lists.koumbit.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/business-aegirproject.org
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> business mailing listbusiness at aegirproject.orghttps://lists.koumbit.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/business-aegirproject.org
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> business mailing list
>>> business at aegirproject.org
>>>
>>> https://lists.koumbit.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/business-aegirproject.org
>>>
>>>
>>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: </pipermail/business-aegirproject.org/attachments/20150830/940b8ab1/attachment.html>