Dennis Myers wrote:
On Sunday 17 November 2002 01:28 pm, Stephen Kuhn wrote:
[snip]
I think we've had this debate on this list before. It's a tricky issue to address, because Free Software is working with a radically different economic model to the commodity market model of proprietary software. In the proprietary model, a software package is seen as a commodity just like a table. The model doesn't work for software (not that it works wonderfully for physical property either), for reasons better explained elswhere (Raymond, Stallman etc.). The new model is still being worked out, the main question being, put crudely, how do the coders eat?" Paying for boxed distributions is one good way of putting food on programmers' tables. The point I was trying to make is that the proprietary model is negative (copy this software and you're a criminal) whereas the Free Software model is positive (you can have it for free, but if you'd like to pay for it, or contribute in some other way, that's great!). Dennis is to be applauded, but that doesn't make people who download their copies "bad".Why are we talking about "buy Mandrake" when it's freely downloadable? This is free software - you pay for packaging, support and the likes...otherwise, it's free software. We should be promoting it as free software - no matter what version of linux you favor...They've got ADSL - they can download the entire set if she already doesn't have it - or even go so far as to do a reinstall via ftp......but buy?
Yeah, buy, I do crashtesting and beta testing on ML since 8.0 and still buy the boxed set from Mandrake just to give the company support. I also need to join the Club but haven't yet cause I keep spending money on the wrong things. : ) Anyway, if no one buys from Mandrakesoft then they go away : (
The Standard box set for 3 CDs and the manual is only $39 US . I realize that in many cases that is a considerable amount of money but for a few out there it is in the budget area.
On a more practical note, I wish Mandrake would sell a plain download CD set as soon as each distro comes out (a la Cheapbytes). I'd certainly buy that, even if it were a dollar or two more than third-party releases.
Sir Robin
--
"Do unto others what you would like others to do unto you. And have fun doing it."
- Linus Torvalds
Robin Turner
IDMYO,
Bilkent University
Ankara 06533
Turkey
www.bilkent.edu.tr/~robin
Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
