In the USA I paid about $6 for a Debian CD from Cheapbytes. Maybe it was
more or less, but it was approximately $6.
My first comparison is to my salary minus taxes, insurance, "cost of
living" (food, mortgage, car, etc), I figure that CD cost me about 1 hour
of "excess income".
A second comparison, is that based on my electric bill and the rated power
consumption of my multiple computer system at home, I figure my set of
Potato CDs cost me the same as about 200 hours of electricity to run my
computers at home.
A third comparison is that my Potato CDs go into a 24x CDrom that I paid
about $50 for maybe a year or two ago. The CDrom is way faster than I
need, but anyway it only costs about eight times as much as the CDrom. In
other words, if I can afford a "fast" CDRom drive, it only costs about 10%
more to buy the CDroms of Debian for the CDrom drive to read.
The last, fourth comparison is similar to comparison number two, where I
estimate my debian CDs cost me the same as it costs to run my electric
water heater for about 75 hours of "active heating" (obviously when the
water inside the thing is hot, it uses almost no electricity because it's
well insulated).
Now considering my first comparison, there is probably a big difference in
salary between USA and Russian networking people, so it is fair to compare.
However, my second comparison is good because I understand the USA has
"comparatively cheap electrical power", at least in the midwest where I
live. So I'd think in Russia if you can afford the electricity to run the
computer for a couple hundred hours, you can probably afford a similar
expense for the CDs.
The third comparison is possibly not fair, because I could have spent $10
on a used slow CDRom to read my Debian CDs, thus making the ratio of
hardware to software costs much worse.
The fourth comparison is a little silly, if all else is equal a set of
Debian CDs could be paid for by not showering for about 150 days, or
skipping every other shower for a year. This is probably not acceptable.
However the same savings could be produced by showering with an attractive
member of the appropriate sex for six months, thus reducing the number and
cost of showers taken by a factor of two, while gaining pleasure in excess
of the pleasure that running Debian alone produces, of course. A win-win
situation if I ever saw one.
I find it hard to believe someone who could use 3 CDs can't afford 3 CDs,
but one solution is to donate CDRoms to less fortunate countries. Put a
list of needy international Linux clubs on the website, and I'll probably
send a set of CDs once or twice per year.
Scott Dier
<dieman@ringw To: David Starner <dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org>
orld.org> cc: Victor Vislobokov <victor@tvmaxima.perm.ru>,
debian-devel@lists.debian.org, (bcc: Vince Mulhollon/Brookfield/Norlight)
01/30/2001 Fax to:
10:37 PM Subject: Re: Open letter to Debian community
* David Starner <dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org> [010130 22:34]:
> > of CDs Debian need. I don't complain, but for me it is hard to afford
> > more then 2 CDs.
> Where are you buying your CDs? You can get Potato for less than $10 from
> some of the CD places. If that's too much, you can buy just the first
> CD.
Perhaps we should first be asking for a comparison in salaries. It's
not fair to bash this if someone legitmanetly *can't* afford two cd's.
--
Scott Dier <dieman@ringworld.org> <sdier@debian.org>
http://www.ringworld.org/ #linuxos@irc.openprojects.net
"When's the last time you used duct tape on a duct?" -Larry Wall
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