On Wed, 20 Jan 1999, Mark Phillips wrote: > > How about the following variation on the theme? > > Rather than starting a for-profit business as a value-added seller of > Debian products, why not start a not-for-profit, user centred, > association that does the same job? It would work a bit like an > automobile association. Users would join by paying a membership fee. > It would be run by a board elected by the members - one vote per > member. Membership fees and other income would be used to pay > employees who do the work.
How about an ISP that in addition to user support etc also does some real technical training in Linux admin and C programming. An Internet Service Provider, that is a school and user "club" and Linux/Debian advocate. Where else could youth go to gget real technical training; the High Schools don't teach any thing techncial and probably couldn't do a good job of it anyway. The ISP's won't teach squat to their clients, scared they might give away some "secret" of the trade and have more competition. There must be some potential in this idea. What about a "network" of mutually supportive organizations that have some real local (geographically)presence. No one else is doeing this. What a great way to expand the technical user base and recruit youth and build the Internet at the same time. Or am I dreaming to much? -steve