Re: a modest proposal - Debian needs more $

[<briand@zipcon.net>]

>>>>> "dman" == dman  <dsh8290@rit.edu> writes:

  dman> When I first saw your subject in my log (before I looked at the
  dman> mailbox itself) I was expecting a really funny and outrageous story
  dman> containing a real suggestion buried in it.  The subject reminds me of

Ouch - that hurt.  Sorry I'm not as clever as you thought I might be.
Although in my defense, charging for downloads certainly was deemed
outrageous by everyone.  And it was a real suggestion, but not seems
like it was ill-considered.  It just seems that Debian shouldn't have
to rely on hand-outs for infrastructure like servers and bandwidth -
not when Debian is such a valuable service/product.

Maybe just proceeding as things currently are is going to work - it
has so far.

  dman> | More packages, more complexity - without bringing in additional
  dman> | resources will Debian start to falter ?  Is there some equitable way
  dman> | of charging to help with that ?  Practically speaking it doesn't look
  dman> | like there is. 

  dman> The only practical way is to convince people that they really ought to
  dman> help.  You can't require people to give the additional resources, but
  dman> you can ask people to willingly give them (donations, of one form or
  dman> another).

Yep - I suppose.  Time will tell.  Still going to use Debian.  Still
going to file bug reports.  Still going to write checks (or use a
credit card).  Hope it's enough...

I have to admit, one thing that makes a lot of sense is that "normal"
users should be insulated from this burden - and that makes it hard to
do anything via Debian directly.  Certainly 3rd parties can pick up a lot of the slack, like "donation" check boxes.

Brian