Jeffrey 'jf' Lim wrote: > On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 6:45 PM, Daniel Bolgheroni > <m...@dbolgheroni.eng.br>wrote: > >> On Tue, 8 Sep 2009, Nick Holland wrote: >> >> > Thanks to those that contribute money and buy CDs. >> >> I would like to buy CDs, but in Brazil these kind of products have a >> high tax fee applied when they hit the harbour. For a $50 CD, I'll >> probably pay almost $almost $70 to someone I don't want to "contribute". >> This doesn't include the shipment cost (~$30 I suspect). >> >> I don't have a Paypal account (yet). If it's worth to trust him, I don't >> know, but I much prefer to donate $50 (although they will deduct 3.9% in >> my case, but at least OpenBSD doesn't have the CD cost) than to pay >> almost the triple to government, shipment, etc. Don't care if I don't >> get the CDs. >> >> Is it possible to OpenBSD to make profit for the project selling books >> or manuals? I don't know the costs or if it's worth (like CDs are better >> for the project than T-shirts, mugs, etc.). It's tax free here, and I >> think: if it's free here, maybe it's somewhere else.
Books and manuals are more like t-shirts and mugs than CDs -- relatively high cost, relatively bulky, more variety to inventory. They also have an added problem of being in a competitive market -- if you want an OpenBSD t-shirt, you will be buying it from OpenBSD. If you want a book that covers OpenBSD, you can buy it from OpenBSD, or you can buy it at the corner book store and have it tonight, or at BigOnlineBookStore for a substantial discount off list price and special deals with the shipping companies. I'm not sure what the margin on books is, but if you try to price against BigOnlineBookStore.com, I suspect your margin goes pretty close to zero. > I have the same concerns as well (i mean the shipping. F, i'll support the > project - but not the shipping?). I did get the disc set, though, but.. it > would be nice to be able to "check out" knowing how much i'm supposed to be > paying for shipping. Don't get me wrong, pure cash donations work nicely to keep the lights on. Well...briefly. Based on some numbers Theo showed me after my earlier note, cash donations from the US and Europe are..uhmm... how do I put this...PATHETIC! We are talking the equiv. of less than 10 CDs each. Canadians are doing a lot better, relatively speaking, but as of Sept 8 (BEFORE I posted my note) all cash donations barely put a dent in the cost of a mini-hackathon. Theo tells me you guys have responded to my note, and thanks to those that did! but there's still a lot of financial slacking goin' on... Nick.
