On Mon, 18 Apr 2011, Theo de Raadt wrote: >> > A number of you may have noticed the recent flurry of activity, >> >leading to stuff like bigmem being turned on.. Some more good stuff is >> >coming soon (my amd64 at my house is using 7 gigabyes of memory for >> >buffer cache, and I'm doing builds without touching disks..). Some >> >really cool stuff is being worked on and is coming to a source tree >> >near you soon. >> > >> > However, I'd like to take the opportunity to remind you all, that >> >the project does depend on CD and shirt sales to keep it alive. Yes >> >you may not use a CD all the time, but the latest one is pretty cool. >> > >> > So, short answer? go buy a CD. pre-orders are a little slow this >> >release, and we need to see some more activity in that area. >> >> This may tie in to something I've noticed -- it's less than two weeks to >> the official release date of 4.9 but there's no sign that the CDs are >> shipping yet. While there's no obligation for them to arrive before >> that date, usually we hear earlier than this that they're shipping. Is >> there some delay? > >Wow -- watch out, or you will kill the message.
My apologies if my reply had any such effect; it certainly wasn't intended to do that. > I note you are inside >North America. Packages inside North America can make it to their >destination in 3 days, 4 days tops. It is April 18. What are you >talking about? Your CD order will arrive around the release time. >Probably before, as is usual, though noone ever promised that! As I said, I believe that OpenBSD's only obligation is to get the pre-order CD sets to us by the release date (and even that isn't absolute, given that shit happens). I was just interested in / curious about why the pre-order process seemed to be working a bit differently from the way it usually has. >As well, I know that other distributors (including Liam in England) >will soon have CDs ready so that there can be a 'coordinated release'. >People on the other continents need to get a chance to be the first at >bragging. Thanks for the explanation. Dave >Let's backtrack. Bob is bringing up an important point (he mentioned >it publically after I mentioned it privately to him earlier, so I know >where this comes from). > >Year on year, when it comes to money that keeps the project going, >nothing much has changed in this project. I think people should >contrast our track record of 'good product' to our 'inability to sell >out'. Unlike everyone else in the "open source industry", we continue >to operate on donations and CD sales ("money)". > >We have kept "donations" and "money" seperated. Donations fund the >things they can easily fund, and "money" funds the things they can >fund easily; we all know there are business/taxation rules to be >followed. The donations primarily fund the hackathons (5-6 a year >these days) and travel assistance for the less fortunate developers to >those hackathons. Great things come from those donations, from those >hackathons we are all running code that came out of them. None of us >can contest that. > >But without CD and tshirt sales, other parts of the project are in >trouble -- the things that are more difficult to fund out of >"donations". And there is a further relationship: If not enough CDs >are sold in a release, there may be no further CDs made after that. >If there are no CDs made or sold, I don't know what will happen. I >doubt donations could help us ever again "bootstrap" a CD release >process again. I don't know where various aspects of the project >would go. Of course everyone knows that part of the CD sales become >my salary (keeping me away from working for companies writing non-free >software perhaps, though I doubt I am employable). But that is only >fair. All of you eat, too. I spend more time in front a keyboard >than most of you... > >If things went bad financially, I don't know how I would cope with >such a big change. I doubt the user community has a plan for that, >either. If you are receiving this mail you are using OpenBSD or the >other things that our developer community have made, so please be >considerate and help us continue. The donations are one thing, and >thank you -- but please remember that the sales component has to be >there too. > >I am only a part of the CD sales money. CD sales money keeps the >electrons flowing through cvs.openbsd.org. Trust me, it is critical. > >> Not that I have any particular standing, but FWIW, y'all please order a >> CD set if you haven't already done so. OpenBSD has served me well for >> quite a few years, and I'd really like to see it continue -- and >> continue to improve. > >Exactly -- let us continue doing this. > -- Dave Anderson <d...@daveanderson.com>