Re: a modest proposal - Debian needs more $
On Mon, Jan 21, 2002 at 10:44:26AM -0800, briand@zipcon.net wrote:
| I find it annoying that I can buy a Debian CD for $3.00 + shipping.
| It should be more.
This is an easy problem to solve! Mail me a (valid) check for $1,000
US and I'll mail you back a CD. :-)
| And remember nothing is stopping anyone from taking my CD that I buy
| and making copies of it.
This is cool. It means I can give my friends a copy of Debian so they
can enjoy it too.
| I donate everytime I buy a CD. Lately I haven't bought a CD because I
| apt-get on DSL at midnight. That's what got me thinking about it.
| It's such a great experience
It is. There are many reasons I didn't buy windows when I put my
machine together. One of the is I'm often cheap (wrt cash).
| I thought to myself - "it's just not fair that I can do this for
| free". Debian needs to pay for equipment, T1's, etc...
No it doesn't. Some people give it for free too. "free" is about
more than just taking.
| So I pay - then we immediately get into the tar-pit of why should I
| pay and no one else does.
'cause you have extra dough to throw around and you want to pay :-)
| There is a similar situation in P2P. .01% of the people upload,
| everyone else downloads.
Maybe only .01% of the people have anything worthwhile to contribute?
I haven't run any stats, but you'll probably find that there are more
people who ask questions here than those who give answers. Is that
"unfair"? My reasoning is that many people come here when they don't
have the answer, but are looking for it. Fewer people here have the
answer, but they freely give it.
| martin> want to fund us? or hire me to fix all the bugs? i promise to fix at
| martin> least 5 bugs a day.
|
| HA ! A drop in the bucket. What about regression testing, boot floppy
| testing, hardware config testing, documentation, code reviews for
| security...
You can hire me too! :-)
| Plus you just made my point - more will get done if we can hire people
| to work full time.
Only if you hire people who actually enjoy the project. Volunteer
armies (take the US in the 1770's for example) work better than hired
ones (take the Germans the British hired for example). The difference
is those Germans were fighting for money. If the lost the battle (but
survived) they got paid (which was the individual's goal in the first
place). The Americans were fighting for their homes. If they lost
the battle (but survived), they lost everything.
| Why not generate that money from CD/ISO/connection sales ?
Go ahead! Charge for connections to your server. (don't worry, I
won't connect to it)
| The service/support does not seem to work well, e.g. postgresQL On the
| other hand, it does seem to work well: Redhat, Suse. Just looking for
| another approach. Maybe there isn't one and I'll just start writing
| more checks and that'll be my answer.
Debian is an example of how things should be. People who have give
freely, and those who don't have receive. It all goes 'round because
those who have aren't hording it. The outcome is that everyone "has"
in the end.
-D
--
I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
Philippians 4:13
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