Some of us: 1. Work for companies which want you to have a physical CD around, even if it is available via FTP. 2. Buy CD's (I have to preorder 3.9, and I will). 3. Put the stickers on our machines and servers. 4. Work on machines which may not be connected to the Internet. 5. Don't have the time to burn everything to CD.
I'm more than willing to buy my CDs every 6 months. The problem with anything FTP-related is that not everyone follows the honor system that it implies. It's much easier to give someone a username and password than it is to dupe a CD :). The issue isn't with new ways to sell the product. It's with the fact that companies who have made a lot of money selling the feature set provided by OpenBSD, OpenSSH, and related projects like IBM, Red Hat, Cisco, and Check Point haven't contributed to the project. It's a double-edged sword. The license the projects are under encourages commercial usage moreso than other licenses. However, that doesn't mean that those who do are going to give back. The better possible solution (and the more professional one, IMHO), is when you have an OBSD-related project, encourage your customers to buy the CDs along with the project, with an explanation of what the project does. ________________________________ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of chefren Sent: Thu 3/23/2006 4:27 PM To: misc@openbsd.org Subject: Re: openbsd and the money -solutions On 03/23/06 20:52, Daniel E. Hassler wrote: > I read that FTP is becoming far more popular than CDROMs as a means > of obtaining OpenBSD. If this is because it's more convenient (vs. folks > just being too cheap) then it might make sense to sell downloadable > official (copyright Theo de Raadt) ISO images of releases as well as > CDROMs. Yes, I read the FAQ I'm just thinking that selling only CDROMs > in today's world may be akin to selling only floppies (no CDROMs > available) a few years back. > > If you don't like this idea don't waste time on it - propose something > better! Yep! CD sales will definitely go down/down/down and FTP use will definitely go up/up/up. Sell access to a new ftp.openbsd.org server with "the real thing". I see no problem at all. The OpenBSD web site may definitely point to the free mirrors too but, like with old CD's, _let people pay for "the real thing"!_ This proposal has nothing to do with less-free or less-open, Theo had no problem with receiving money for "the real" CD's, why have trouble with receiving money for "the real FTP"??? It is clear it seems clueless for most techies, the Sunsite ftp site may even be the "real" server, but it's clear for me and lots of others that people and companies will be paying for being able to download from "the real and trustable" ftp.openbsd.org server. Sigh... Is it so difficult to try this for a period? I offer to do the administration. +++chefren
