Re: intro/about
On Sat, Sep 01, 2001 at 11:36:54AM +0200, Josip Rodin wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 31, 2001 at 02:21:49PM -0500, James A. Treacy wrote:
> >
> > You say free, but the CDs cost money!
> > vs
> > You say free, but the CDs/bandwidth cost money!
> > Personally, I find the original less confusing. Saying 'bandwidth
> > costs money' makes me think someone is going to send a bill (above
> > what is normally paid for connectivity) to download software.
> > Of course you need to pay for connectivity, so what was the point of
> > this change?
>
> Well it's simple -- you can't tell people that Debian is completely free of
> charge if they have to download it over the Internet, analogously when they
> have to record it to a CD. All of this "raw material" stuff costs money.
>
The incremental cost for an additional download (above what users
already download) is negligible. I think your change just confuses the
issue. As an analogy, people tend to think of riding a bicycle as free
even though bicycles don't last forever and also need maintenance.
> > I suggest changing the word costless to 'without cost' on line 101.
>
> Uh, okay, I wonder why...
>
While costless is a perfectly valid word, I have never heard anyone
actually use it.
> > Although Debian is non-profit, we do have expenses.
> > vs
> > We don't make any profit from doing any of this, and we do have
> > various expenses.
> > It's not clear what you didn't like about the original. How about
>
> I didn't like the conjunction (it's messy to translate in at least one other
> language :), and I didn't like "although", it implied that the reader
> thought we don't have any expenses because we're non-profit.
>
> > Debian does not make any money from the sale of CDs, but we do have
> > expenses.
>
> Well, we don't make any money from anything we do, except from Shaleh
> selling T-shirts on trade fairs :)
>
But we do get donations. Non-profit does not imply cashless. In fact
non-profits can even sell things. I still sugges the third version
over the other two.
> > Another change:
> > <P>Don't take our word for it - try Debian out yourself. Since hard disk
> > space has become less expensive, you can probably spare about 500MB to try
> > out Debian. Debian can be easily installed on this extra space
> > and can coexist with your existing OS. If you eventually need more space,
> > you can simply delete one of your OSes (and after you see the power of the
> > Debian system, we are sure it won't be ours).
> > to
> > <P>Don't take our word for it - try Debian yourself. Since hard disk
> > space has become less expensive, you can probably spare 500MB.
> > Debian can easily be installed on this extra space
> > and can coexist with your existing OS. If you eventually need more space,
> > you can simply delete one of your OSes (and after you see the power of a
> > Debian system, we are confident which one it will be).
>
> Most of this doesn't really relate to my change, does it? :) I've always
> said that work incites work, which is cool.
>
I simply went through the document. Not eveything relates to your
changes. :) We're just trying to improve the document.
> > Section
> > How do I get support?<
> > was changed to
> > I can't set it up all by myself. Where do I get support for Debian?
> > That doesn't sound to bad except what follows tells them to try and
> > install it themselves. I suggest changing it back (s/How/Where/ if you
> > want).
>
> The next paragraph tells them that they _can_ do it all by themselves... on
> the other hand, that's a silly thing to promote, lart me :)
>
> It should be changed so it tells people that they can do it on their own,
> briefly, and then mention consultants.
>
So what are you suggesting this section look like?
--
James (Jay) Treacy
treacy@debian.org
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