Hello,
Novell has sponsored some FOSS events but this needs to be planned quite some time ahead. We have only a limited budget, so the question is which events to sponsor and how. We should not randomly sponsor events but define a plan on which regions we want to grow the community first and how.
Even without sponsoring a lot of is possible as the German Linuxtag showed where we had no sponsoring, a free booth, banners and a great program. I've never been to India so don't know how e.g. FOSS.in looks like but hope that similar stuff works as well.
I think that one-size-fits-all doesnot always turn out great. In India, as Sankar P pointed out, it is extremely difficult, in terms of time and money, to get people together at one place. Case in point - An Eurail pass costs 400 Euro, that is half a week's pay for an avg german (PCI ~ 35K Euro). A return train ride from Vadodara (cyberorg/ShayonJ) to Bangalore() takes INR 3000 (PCI ~ 80K INR), needs 24 hrs each way. If you fly to save time, cost escalates to 12K INR. That is difficult for even a professional.
Why u always talk about travel cost? Who said u should travel far away from ur home to make a Launch Party?
From feedback of conference participants, I hear that sponsorship is not really something that makes an effect - what makes an effect are presentations, tutorials and conversations, e.g. at a booth.
Which conference is a pertinent question. While Linux awareness is not abysmally low, it is not strikingly high either in India, with many people preferring Windows just because they have never heard of Linux. How can one think a Launch party to a new version of something one has not heard of will be of interest? Also, there is the issue of inadequate encouragement from employers, and consumers thinking on lines like if I get Windows for free, as also games, s/w, courtesy the high piracy rates here. To them, ideas like freedom, flexibility don't really count. They think of all that in politics not in software.
as I said it before sounds to me like the big african/australian bird putting his head in the sand.
So, let's not say, we need sponsorship money to this or that - let's discuss what we can do with what we have to do.
As I pointed above, sponsorship will help not despite presence, but along with presence, which in turn it can fund. A booth means you have to pay.
of course that are the terms of foss.in projects sponsored/owned by a commercial organization like openSUSE or fedora have to pay. There wasnt a directly sponsoring fedora or RedHat for foss.in they did what AJ said they shipped speakers there Lennart Poettering, Dimitris Glezos, Jörg Simon all fedora guys here from europe, They had talks, and keynotes and a whole track there of course and are they there the prepare a booth to and I am sure the hung up a big banner.
Also corporate awareness is lower than Europe, here even Enterprise Linux has a small market.
We talking not about market for what purpose we should do that? We give away ur distribution for free. Its a long distance race invest today in markets of tommorrow ;)
I'm with Gnokii that Launch events can be very easy to do so wonder why so few do them,
Launch parties are easy when you have numerous volunteers in geographic proximity.
I planned mine alone, have nothing to do with lot of volunteers.
30 Ambassadors and few members in India for 3 million sqkm and 1200 million people is hardly comparable to 9 Ambassadors and numerous members in Germany for 0.3 million sqkm and 80 million people.
that have nothing to do with the size of the country. There is only the count of Ambassadors from interest nothing more. Noone requested here to make on every place in ur country a Launch Party so that the size is from interest.
Even the 9 Ambassadors in Germany are, as far as I can see, in blocks of 2/3 in the same town/area.
maybe u should not look a same town, maybe u should ask u self why are there 3 Ambassadors same town. Its because I did a Launch Party there and so I fetched support. I didnt say a lot of windows user here and our university like scientific linux and all there hates openSUSE no I didnt, I made a Launch Party and I find some people. I did and thats the point
Do not get me wrong. I am not saying all that can be done has been done by us. It's just that a lot of us are trying in our own humble capacities.
ok, when u not doing Launch Parties what doing the Ambassadors from India then? Please tell me, say not I contribute to the wiki or such stuff, because thats not the job for an Ambassador.
In an anti-Linux atmosphere, it is already hard enough for us without the system itself (read, community) turning antagonistic to us.
~kknundy
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