Marketing of Debian releases
Hi,
Apparently, the issue of marketing Debian has become unavoidable.
Do the listmasters still remember how to activate digest mode? :-)
On Wed, 26 Aug 1998, Lars Wirzenius wrote:
> Philip Hands:
> > I think we should encourage them not to differentiate between the old and the
> > new (i.e. call them both 2.0 in adverts) because people that receive the old
> > version really are not going to suffer any real hardship.
>
> This is exactly the attitude that I disagree with. The changes between
> 2.0 and 2.0r1 are significant (fixes to security problems!). Having
> to download the changed packages, even if they are few, certainly _is_
> a real hardship. Not everyone is on the Internet.
People not (very much) on the internet are far less likely to be very
concerned about the latest security issues. For an old computer at home
that is never exposed in any way, a debian 1.1 cd would still work fine
for me and most other people.
People who are reasonably concerned about possible flaws in the software
on their cd are probably so because of the fact that their system is
exposed on the net in some degree. In that position, it is likely not a
problem to fetch a batch of updates from an ftp site. A batch that is
relatively small compared to the amount of software on the cd that does
not need to be updated.
Instead of worrying about possible misunderstandings people might have and
the possible averse consequences that might have for cd resellers' stock
and bickering about the pros and cons of various workarounds, the problem
should be solved head on:
You buy a Debian cd _because_ it is so easy to update and upgrade!
A hint should be given to the cd manufacturers that if they use that fact
in their marketing, then they need to worry less about their stock.
> However, I'm not going to argue the point further. This is a value
> decision, not a technical one, and I'm not willing to spend the effort
> to change everyone else's values to be correct. However, I don't want
> anyone to be able to say there is a consensus, when there is not.
IMHO the key to the problem is seeing that "technical" and "quality" refer
to the same thing here.
Now to get back to the real issue of marketing Debian: How exactly does
Debian "save lives"?
http://sunsite.unc.edu/Dave/Dr-Fun/df9808/df980825.jpg
Cheers,
Joost
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