To date we have been completely vendor neutral in the way we handle the advertisers. The vendors are ordered by when their entry was added (which generally means that the longest standing vendors are first). The only exception to this is that vendors who only make snapshots get listed at the end. This is done simply to make it less likely that a luser will buy a snapshot when what they really wanted, but didn't know it, was a CD with the Official release on it.
There are two problems we have been having: vendors who screw up the CD and vendors who advertise one release but put another on the CD. Infomagic is by far the most common culprit for both of these, but other vendors occasionally make annoying mistakes. For example CheapBytes usually does a good job but the latest CD does not have the standard layout which messes up cd_autoup.sh. The first thing we need to do is decide what information should be on the page. The current format was designed to give information on what type of CD the vendor sells while minimizing information about specific releases and prices. This was done to ease administration of the page as no one wants to spend the time doing a thorough check of every vendors' product that carries Debian. The thought previously was that the vendors would send up updates occasionally. While a few vendors did, most of them never did which put the burden upon us to keep the page correct. As many people judge us by the CDs, we need to come up with a better system. I would like to list every vendors product that carries Debian on the page. People can then submit corrections if they find a problem with a specific product. This will help others avoid that product while avoiding having us to blacklist vendors. Anyone got ideas on this? BTW, I'd really like someone to take responsibility for this page. Jay Treacy
