Commercial support

[Troy Rollo]

On Wed, 4 May 2005 22:35, Andreas Mohr wrote:
> I believe that any serious amount of money for Wine support listing
> is a mistake, since it keeps out some people.

Indeed. It seems to me that it would be better if anybody who has the 
*capacity* to provide services could be listed - even if it's after hours or 
weekend work. If lone coders have the opportunity to get paid for writing 
code that goes into WINE, then they may well develop that into a business 
that allows them to work on WINE full time. In a similar vein, it should not 
be limited to companies - there is no intrinsic reason why a customer should 
necessarily prefer to deal with a company over an individual, and there are 
several reasons why they may prefer the reverse.

Rather than set threshholds on capacity, there might be a tiered arrangement 
whereby anybody can get a class D listing for nothing. Class C, B and A 
listings would cost $200, $1000, and $10000. The page would then be ranked by 
listing class, and within listing class by geography.

That way you can satisfy the needs of people who want some assurance of 
capacity, and the needs of people who want somebody local or convenient.

The interests of the project are in building up an industry, based around the 
projects, and the more participants there are the greater the viability of 
the industry as a whole.

If the page goes ahead, I suspect many more people would be willing to take 
what business comes their way - and if somebody lacks the capacity to service 
the business coming their way they can always either refer people, or as I 
advise people who cannot handle the volume of business coming in and don't 
want to take on staff - raise prices.