Re: a modest proposal - Debian needs more $
>>>>> "Colin" == Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org> writes:
Colin> /usr/share/doc/debian/debian-manifesto is a pretty good
Colin> start. Debian is a distribution free in terms of both speech
Colin> and beer. If we start charging our users for downloading it,
Colin> we will be making the lives of many of our users much more
Colin> difficult, which I completely oppose.
OK. But some people downloading it are not users - they are
re-sellers.
Here is a somewhat off-topic question :
You know all those nice CD vendors that have a donation checkbox for
Debian. How do I know they are really donating the money ? And if
they sell Debian CD's why aren't they _required_ to have a donation
checkbox ?
Colin> Throwing them a bone by saying that 56K downloads will remain
Colin> free isn't acceptable either. Take the recent case of a
You are correct - it's not a very good idea, is it ?
Colin> friend of mine who wanted to set up a router, but didn't have
Colin> any Unix experience. I pointed her at linuxiso.org, she
Colin> downloaded and burnt the first potato CD, and I walked her
Colin> through the installation process via IRC. Easy. If she'd had
Colin> to wait days to download what she needed over dialup, I doubt
Colin> she'd have bothered, and I would have felt ashamed that
Colin> Debian had made her life more difficult just for the sake of
Colin> a few extra bucks.
A great example and a situation which had not occurred to me.
Colin> The fourth clause in the Debian Social Contract is "Our
Colin> Priorities are Our Users and Free Software". If you forget
Colin> either one, it stops being Debian.
Well don't forget that I'm bringing this all up as a potential way to
make life better for users in the long run. Debian will certainly not
go away, but it could degrade to a point where a very small number of
people will use it which means that for all practical purposes it has
gone away.
Colin> Donations, maybe - but charging for downloads is just wrong.
No maybe about it. Volunteers spend time on Debian which is in fact a
donation. Without donations nobody could download that ISO on DSL at
full speed. Donations are not optional. Charging is.
What I was trying to figure is :
More packages, more complexity - without bringing in additional
resources will Debian start to falter ? Is there some equitable way
of charging to help with that ? Practically speaking it doesn't look
like there is.
Colin> Another thing that's worth saying: the Debian QA team, which
Colin> does a lot of the "unfun" work you talk about, is manned
Colin> almost entirely by unpaid volunteers.
Then I guess I should join that team instead of tying up the mailing
list with silly ideas.
Brian
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