Once upon a time I spewed out about 32 million ideas to chmou and warly
about features for 80 81. I was on a whole lotta caffeine and about 12
days of coding. Included were ideas for sponsored ads in various places
where it would cost mandrake nothing. For instance, those useless
self-advertisements in the installer could be replaced with commercials
where users could 'click to receive more information when the install is
finished'. And upon completion of install, either in program but from
hd or on first boot a message, website, demo, whatever would pop up
(preceded by one of pixels famous dialogues that would list the clicked
ads and allow the user to choose what to view, how to view it, whatever
so they didn't get pissed when the booted up and a million ads appear
out of nowhere that they don't remember). Such as (after main install
completes and the ads are done) a box like for startup services that has
ad names listed and a user clicks the star/checkbox for one to 'view
add' 'get more info' or 'wait until I boot!'. If a recommended install
for development, server, or workstation or whatever was chosen, adds
could be based on that. Such as a user clicks the development class and
ads for osdn or Rational products turn up. Or base on package selection
such as if someone selected devel package group or even more specific
"You have chosen to install xxx package. You may also be interested in:
{and show an ad for related product}"
Other places..there is always the website...and u could do demo products
in distribution of non-open source like say "<mdk> Hey Corel, give us a
little dough and we'll include your freeware version of wordperfect in
our distrib. assuming it's legal.
<corel> Well, sounds good, we pay you $x.yz per copy
sold. After all, you have no way of measuring network or hd installs."
For lin4win installs you could try to get M$ to advertise 'reasons to
stick with windows' just for the hell of it. If you that desperate for
cash or would you ever be?
Big money maker if only for one company at a time: Default desktop
image not from mandrake but from someone who paid a whole lot to put
their ad there. After all, on the first boot at the very least the
would be forced to see it and read it and it would stick with 'em well.
Not to mention total dumbasses that won't go to the trouble to change
the image will get it ingrained in their minds because they see it on
every graphical boot. Best yet, AURORA! That one just occured to me.
Forget the mdk logo and make an ad or ad set there. Heck, it could
even automatically update from a list of adds on the cooker mirrors
every now and then so the ads would change and so would money sources.
BTW it doesn't always have to be visual, instead of anoying special
effects sounds on boot have rotating audio ads for either actual boot
or login to graphical and gnome/kde that play boot sounds would have
script (maybe where it says building window manager sessions it would
run) that rotate audio ads.
I gotta galla now but would love to see mandrake pull in some cash
without resorting to proprietary code :). Also, more thoroughly
advertise the non-open soft that comes in the power/deluxe/server packs
so people know they're paying extra for something other than blemish.
