On Fri Sep 12, 2003 at 09:22:15PM +0200, Jan Ciger wrote: (Ok, I lied, but I had to respond to this post because it's just infuriating and insulting).
> | I hate to say it, but it cracks me up how people are so against > advertising, > | our business model, and things we do to make revenue so that the > developers > | and others in the company can eat and afford to spend all of their time > | working on the distro. Sounds like the community would rather have a nice > | distribution but all the developers should be homeless and starving. > > I think, that this is just not true and most people here will agree. > There are plenty of ways how to make money out of the product without > resorting to ads. E.g. selling support, selling special "enterprise" > versions (e.g. RedHat is doing this) or making the distro > semi-commercial (aka Suse). Listen. No matter what we do, there will be some people who don't like it, and those people will be vocal. History has proven this. Selling support? Sure, great idea. But people will go to mailing lists, newsgroups, web forums, etc. before purchasing support. It's great for enterprise, lousy for "joe user". We would also need an increase in staff, which means we need to pay these people (and train them) before utilizing them, which costs money. So something has to be done to create enough money to increase the size of the support department. Selling special enterprise versions? C'mon. People were *so* pissed that Corporate Server didn't have ISOs available. What's the result? People who want servers (and pay) buy ProSuite because it's cheaper. People download the ISOs and use those for servers. Then people cry when we don't support them after 18mos. Making the distro semi-commercial? Did you not read this thread? People seem to think that with these ads Mandrake *is* semi-commercial. So if you're suggesting this as a viable alternative, well, guess what.. you just stepped up in favour of what we're doing according to what has been contributed to this thread already! (See what I mean about no matter what you do some people won't like it?) > I do not think, that there is a problem with making money out of the > product. Most people here are Club members or bought their boxes. Fair enough, but I don't know about "most". Shall we conduct a poll and determine how many people are on the cooker list and how many have bought 9.1 and/or are current Club members? I don't think "most" will measure up. Fact is, considering our estimated number of users, an extremely small percentage of people are Club members, and I'm guessing in the order of 5-10% and that's likely being generous. You want to see ad-free versions of Mandrake? Turn that number into 50% and I guarantee you will have a jaw-dropping next distribution because the resources will be there to go into doing some fantastic stuff. > Problem is, that : > > a) this alienates the users - I do not know anybody who is fond of ads, > most users hate them. Yes, you could remove them, but I do not think > that the user will come back if the first thing he sees is an ad for > some unrelated product. Especially the default screensaver decision is > bad :-( Please. You didn't read the url I posted either. Before you replied, you should have done so; this point wouldn't have been mentioned. Screensavers will not be touched. This misinformation is causing a lot of bad will towards us and it's just plain *false*. And who says it's going to be an unrelated product? You think we're throwing ads in there for groceries at Safeway? These are Linux-related ads from Mandrake partners. They are related and they are relevant. > b) nobody even bothered to say something to people in Cooker. There are > plenty of people there, who are spending lots of time working on Cooker > without any remuneration. People here are not even worth a mail from MDK > saying something like "oh, btw, there will be ads in the upcoming > version, what do you think?", it seems. Somebody had to notice this on > an obscure web page and also Slashdot picked it up before somebody from > MDK bothered to say something. You know what? I hate to shatter your ego and I'm sure I'll get flooded with hate mail but... cooker is *not* MandrakeSoft. Yes we value your input, yes we value your contributions, yes we value your support, and yes we value *you*. BUT, that having been said, MandrakeSoft is a company and as such has to make decisions that will benefit the company, it's employees, and it's products (with the end resulting benefiting *you* in a way that we see benfits all). MandrakeSoft has had to make some tough decisions in the past and we will likely have to do so in the future. We don't expect everyone to like or even agree with our decisions.... they always affect or offend someone even while someone else is agreed and happy with it. This is called business. Not all of us are here just for fun and doing this in our spare time... some people have a personal and vested interest in MandrakeSoft's survival. So if something like this is not asked of the cooker crowd, then it's not meant to be an insult to the cooker crowd, it just means that the company is making a decision as a company. Can you imagine how long it would take to get anything done if we asked every little question on cooker? I mean, where would it end? Would you like us to ask you what font to use or what colors we should use for the buttons in the installer because maybe, just maybe, blue offends someone and someone else would rather see green? Not everything needs to be, or should be, consulted with "cooker" first. This is a development community, not a management community. I think it's time people learned to deal with that. > | (And no, I won't bother contributing to this thread anymore) > > Me neither, had enough already. But it also shows, that Mandrakesoft > does not care much what their developers and users think. Nice :-( Yeah, right, we don't care. Give me a break. What ads have to do with technical development is beyond me. Anyways, slashdot and the other site(s) got it all wrong. Try reading the authoritative link I posted and get some perspective. I find the tone of this email, no this entire thread, to be highly insulting. You know what? If we didn't care, there wouldn't be a cooker and one day you would wake up to 9.2 pre-orders without having any idea of how it got there. Think about that as well. Oh, and everything written in this thread is my personal perspective and opinions and are not necessarily shared by MandrakeSoft as a company or it's other employees. It does not indicate MandrakeSoft's position on anything other than the link I had previously posted (which someone didn't bother to read) which clarifies this entire situation. So if you want to start the flames and hate mail, direct them to me and not MandrakeSoft as a whole and I'll happily ignore you. Thanks. -- MandrakeSoft Security; http://www.mandrakesecure.net/ Online Security Resource Book; http://linsec.ca/ "lynx -source http://linsec.ca/vdanen.asc | gpg --import" {FE6F2AFD : 88D8 0D23 8D4B 3407 5BD7 66F9 2043 D0E5 FE6F 2AFD}
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