Future Debian CD plans

[bruce@pixar.com (Bruce Perens)]

This is directed to the debian-devel mailing list and to individuals who
have expressed an interest in producing Debian CDs. If you don't want to
be on the list any longer, please send me mail.

A number of people have been asking for an "official" Debian CD and a
commercial Debian help-desk. Their comment is that it is easier to sell
Debian to management for use within their organizations if it _looks_
like a commercial product. For us, the challenge of producing an
official CD is:

    1. We don't want to alienate the CD manufacturers who have distributed
       us so well.

    2. We don't want to be in the CD manufacturing business, the
       inport-export business, or the order fulfillment business.

    3. We want to get Debian into as many people's hands as we can,
       for as little money as possible.

Thus, I have a proposal:

A. We will open a paid help-desk, and will sell help-desk credits to CD
   manufacturers who wish to purchase them and to the end-user. Of course,
   we don't mind if you have your own help-desk, and we're not shutting
   down the free help on debian-user.

B. We will not produce an official CD - instead we will produce an official
   ISO image and copyrighted artwork. We will allow any CD manufacturer
   to produce and distribute "official" Debian CDs using that image and
   artwork under contract with us. The contract will stipulate a
   per-unit fee to the project for "official" CDs. The fee is yet
   undetermined - I'll need feedback from CD manufacturers on what it
   should be and how it should be charged. I think it makes sense for
   CD manufacturers to package the official CD with one help-desk
   credit, your feedback would be appreciated.

C. We will continue to allow anyone and everyone to distribute unofficial
   copies of Debian without charge. You can even use the "official" CD
   image to do this, but you can't call it "official" or use the cover
   artwork without our contract.

How does this sound?

	Thanks

	Bruce Perens
	Debian Project Leader
--
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