Re: [Fsfe-uk] [Fwd: [Fsuk-manchester] Richard Stallman talk - Manchester (1st May)]

[MJ Ray]

Ian Lynch <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Thu, 2008-04-17 at 22:48 +0100, Dave Crossland wrote:
> > I think its more worthwhile
> > learning how to get paying clients and route around the
> > certification-employment system...
>
> It's easy to say route round it but how?

I hope we can find a more peer-to-peer system of referrals and
recommendations one day.  You can argue that that becomes more of a
distributed certificate system, but I don't think that's what Dave
Crossland is arguing against and I feel it's better than the current
top-down accreditation model which has seen mathematics university
entrants arrive without some basic mathematics skills.

> What are your clients going to pay for?

Now that's a big question.  Whatever they want?

> If you say technical support services, that is fine but how do
> you then compete with the established players that have spent years and
> a lot of money building relationships with the customers?
> How do you generate a market for your services when very little
> exists and you are small with no investment resources?

Those are fairly widespread barrier to entry.  You can work for one of
the established players until you build your own links (become an
agent or something) or you can look to find some support service other
people don't offer. Or you can look for new entrants to the customer
side of the market and target them.  I don't think that holding a
certification is any great advantage on its own.

> This is a strategy to get paying
> clients and to work out an alternative model for generating development
> resources other than selling software licenses. 

That reminds me of a question that makes me uncomfortable because I
don't have a good answer: why is selling licences to use the name or
symbols of that certificate any more ethical than selling licences to
use software?  How can you teach the ideas behind free software when
controlling a certification scheme which necessarily denies people
those freedom to share their certificate power and so on?

Ian Lynch <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Fri, 2008-04-18 at 11:52 +0100, Dave Crossland wrote:
> > I feel these facts reinforce my point: The certificates and the grades
> > we vie for in school and universiry are not important in life.
>
> Tell that to a child that needs 5 GCSEs to get to college. Or an
> unqualified doctor that needs a job.

College general entry requirements are fairly frequently waived if the
child has equivalent skills.  The main reason for general entry
requirements is that admissions tutors aren't paid enough to have time
to check every case.

Doctors are a different situation: the damage they can do means the
state has laid down basic requirements.  However, I've met a few
generally qualified doctors who I've chosen to avoid thereafter. While
I don't have a certificates, I'm sure some non-specialist primary care
doctors know less about my illness than me - I live with it 24x7x365
and general certificates are no guarantee of specialist knowledge.

[...]
> > no one buys from a company because of what grades the directors have,
> > and it is generally impossible to find out that information.
>
> However in most cases Directors of companies are graduates because the
> system requires that as a basic pre-requisite. [...]

What system?  It's not in question 10 of
http://www.companies-house.gov.uk/about/gbhtml/gbf1.shtml#one

  "10. Can anyone be a company director?

  In general terms, yes, but there are some rules. [...]"

Confused,
-- 
MJ Ray (slef)
Webmaster for hire, statistician and online shop builder for a small
worker cooperative http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
(Notice http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html) tel:+44-844-4437-237