New forum for business related topics

[nocturn]

Ubuntu is more than a hobby to a lot of people and pretending that the forums are just for non-lucrative, non-entertainment purposes is wrong. The forums provide free support, which does not mean that they have to exclude any group.

That is also the case for me. I run Ubuntu to do graphical development and webdesign for our store. Everything in the store runs on Linux and we sell Linux pre-installed laptops.
At my day-job, I also admin a critical webserver running on SuSE.

Yet, the forums are not a substitute for commercial support where you can get contracts guaranteeing a response time (like from Sun).
You are free to ask the question, whatever the purpose is, but everyone is equally free to provide an answer at the point in time that is convenient for them.

Is it wrong that some users gravitate to the server forum or the programming forum and do not contribute much elsewhere? Why would this be different in a business-migration section?

Off course not, I often hang around the server forum too since I run multiple Linux servers.
I'm just saying that you can also not complain when your answer in any section are not answered or not answered in x amount of hours. Answers will not appear quicker because a question is business critical.

[timczer]

I think this is a good idea. I have been in the process of setting up a server and web site for a company project for training materials. I have had to post and search for many different subjects in this pursuit to learn how to do many of these things. I have noted that many of the people responding are those who have done these things in a business setting and use them in their own business pursuits or jobs. Many of us in these environments must deal with the interaction of our opensource software and the bigger business world that is dominated by Windows software (Office, being the most obvious). These are challenges that to be discussed with people in similar situations in a more specific area would be beneficial (at least to me it would). Someone pulling together the tutorials that apply to these "business" settings would be great (in the same vein as the Ubuntu Documentation Storage Facility now does).

As for the "time is money" saying, this derives from how one in business evaluates an investment. The time-value of money is an important variable in looking at return on investment. Simply, a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow (due to inflation, your ability to invest that dollar and earn interest,etc.). So, anything that that delays my ability to earn a dollar today costs me time, which means I lose the inherent value of that money during the lost time, therefore the "time is money" saying. It isn't a mathematical formula that has a reciprocal property, it is shorthand for the time-value paridigm of investment evaluation.

[az]

I'm just saying that you can also not complain when your answer in any section are not answered or not answered in x amount of hours. Answers will not appear quicker because a question is business critical.

I agree. But I really don't think the "time is money" comment was meant to imply that. I think it refers to what is known as the "total cost of ownership" (a title that in of itself refers to software as property). If you save three hundred dollars by not having to buy the software, but it takes one person a whole week's work getting it installed, that is not a good investment.

This is a very very big topic. This is one of the big points that FLOSS needs to tackle to gain marketshare.

More marketshare means more vendor support and so on and so on.

[curuxz]

The principal behind the site I am setting up is not that business should get express help over end users but that business users could use a totaly seperate arena to discuss their IT and Ubuntu issues. For instance...

Business users tend to prefer the stable versions of packages, and not be intrested in the kind of stuff that looks cool then crases. This is what I mean by mission critical systems, they need to just work. While ubuntu is great for that there are times when solutions given or products recomended are betas or stop-gap messures. While this is great for desktop users in a business world this can be a pain.

Desktop users love choice, they like exploring and testing the choices, Business users in general want to be told ie Ms Office compatible replacement IS open office. If that makes sense, im not saying its definitive or another would be wrong it would just be nice if some likeminded people got together and said this is what we think is the best for the business enviroment at the moment. So that business users can login, and know exactly what to look for and know its been tested in their situations.

While Ill endevour to make a site where technical support is availble the main purpose is for:
Knowlege base of systems, programs and files usefull to business.
Forum for discussing Opensystems in the workplace
Ideas for expanding linux (and more specificaly ubuntu) into a larger market
Ideas for making opensource more commercaily viable for small businesses
Help for building office replacements out of opensource, such as groupware to PIM intergration and providing a collected howto on setting up all the systems an office needs not just getting a load of independant applications and then wondering how to move data between them.

I LOVE THIS SITE, i think it has the BEST community forum i have ever found. I would never think that the way it works should be changed or that commercail/business members should get priority. I do think this forum however is mainly for the linux gurus' and the linux converts and that business users have so much to gain from open source and Ubuntu with its ease of use but need a platform to build on that.

Hence starting the open business site next month, I will try and form a site which does not prefrence bussiness but simply talolrs its solutions to ones that business users would need, since their demands are often diffrent from the end users.

As they said time is money, this does not refer to being helped faster, it refers to a desire to work more efficienctly with smarter applications and a smarter, ubuntu based desktop system.

[Gowator]

[QUOTE=nocturn]

Firstly Small companies IMHO have more to gain than corporate multinationals from OpenSource... what they are missing is the skill sets and time to implement it.
IBM/Novell are not about to start looking for consultancy in companies of 5-10 people yet it is these companies which stand to gain the most.



It depends on how busy you are at that moment. If you are working for a small company and it is a slow period, you may have the time to spend 5 hours searching for something. They hours are paid for anyway and getting that card would add to the hourly cost.

For some medium sized businesses, it could be cheaper to have a dedicated Linux/support person and pay him monthly then to get external support once a month (a windows reinstall also takes time and costs money).



This forum is not intended to do so. We are not the end-user support for any company.

If you use Linux in your organization, you should either have in-house support of buy support externally. That said, someone doing the internal support may fall back to the forums to find stuff (you never know everything).

Either you didn't actually read what I wrote or you have problems with English. If its the latter what language do you prefer?
If its the former perhaps try reading before agreeing with someone who agrees with you.

[curuxz]

[QUOTE=Gowator]

agreeing with someone who agrees with you.

Would you rather they disagree with someone who agrees with them lol

Yea im confused.

[macgyver2]

I think it's an interesting suggestion, yonkman, but don't hold your breath. The forums won't even implement an area for Edubuntu-related threads...

[yonkman]

My choice of migrating to Linux was a business decision, not really a personal one.

Although the "Time=Money" phrase is WELL overused, I think the proponents in this tread have explained it aptly.

I work by billable hours. If I am not working on a billable event, I don't make money. (my wife says that is not an option!). Ilost ~1-2 weeks of billable time the last 3 months with my Win problems.

I have sat on the sidelines for a long time, before making the switch for a lot of reasons, but mostly because I have been (and am still) swimming in a sea of MS.

I also was doing CF and ASP dev primarily with MSSQL backend.

With MYSQL 5 and PHP5 I saw a great alternative. I am now primarily doing developemnt in those technologies.

HOWEVER, I am developing and supporting MS specific technologies because the need exists and I am in business to help people with their technology problems.

I really think there are A LOT of people like myself that are ready to come off the fence and provide a huge push for OpenSource in the business environment.

Hence, the suggestion for a business section in this forum.

Believe me, if it wasn't for this forum I probably would still be working in my $2k laptop sitting next to me idle right now. (I have to find time to wipe and rebuild the XPPro on that)

I am not a true tech geek but do know my way around a system and it was somewhat challenging for me to get everything right. I know a lot of people who would have given up the migration a lot sooner.

Demanding answers by bumping questions is just plain rude. Some people are just raised that way.

I will also take this moment to thank the moderators on this forum and all forums for doing an invaluable service.

Also thanks to all who offered their opinions (good or bad) on this and all my other posts.

[Gowator]

Demanding answers by bumping questions is just plain rude. Some people are just raised that way.

then what would you suggest people do if the question hasn't been answered in a week or a month? Most of the questions I have ever asked have gone a month without a single reply when I haven't bumped them...and I fail to see what is rude about a question on the 50th page of unanswered posts being bumped...
or should I just apologise for asking the qquestion int he first place?

[az]

Everything is a matter of interpretation, isn't it?

Yonkman never mentioned bumping posts in the name of "time is money". Others said that. That's the point.

And it *is* rude to bump a post every few minutes and complain about a lack of response. Some people do that.

Most don't.

You can bump a post without demanding a response and being rude.