On 10/4/06, Stuart Henderson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
One of the points of EEE is that they're produced in the country where they're intended to be sold, so the production costs are tied to that economy and currency, not to the price of oi^W^W^W US dollar, and reducing the level of imports into the country.
you are right. also the cheap labor and cheaper material prices helps in keeping the selling price low.
(note the "intended to be sold"; they will almost certainly end up sold to people in other countries too).
it is not legal to sell it in all countries except those mentioned in its cover. typically here it reads like below. ======================== For sale in the Indian Subcontinent ( India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and Maldives ) only. Illegal for sale outside of these countries. ========================================================================== Some books include some countries of South Africa too.
Since it's freely available open source software, anyone is free to produce and sell a CD of OpenBSD, so there's nothing stopping an EEE from being produced (as long as it isn't a direct copy of the official CD set).
Yes but there was a large disagreement and confusion about it here. http://www.bsd-india.org/pipermail/bsd-india/2005-November/000859.html The above thread is a classic example. I did ask Theo clarification about it but got no reply ( I am not sure he saw the mail. I think he was backpacking/cycling/hiking or some thing like that.) but I didn't make the ISO according to the request and upload it anywhere.
But unlike a book where there's a longer time to recover the costs, the CDs are only really worthwhile for, say, 6-12 months, and there needs to be some reasonably large market for it to be worthwhile producing and fairly quickly distributing them than making a bulk-buy of official CDs and selling them on.
There are places on the Internet like http://www.bsd-india.org/pipermail/bsd-india/2005-November/000859.html where you can get CD for 100 Rs. I got my first CD that way. M S Window XP/ 2003 is cheaper. Rs 15-50. Depending on the Price of the CD and the writing charges :-) People occasionally ( mainly students who cannot afford a good Internet connection ) request me to send them OpenBSD CDs with their favourite software packages for free. And I do that. Some times I distribute custom made OpenBSD CDs to Computer Engineering students - many of them know only MS Windows and Redhat even though they have text books that mention in detail about BSDs :-) - But since Theo remained silent on the issue I did not go for any type of mass production distribution etc. Last year in FOSS.in http://foss.in/2006/info/Main_Page they had put ISOs of many Distributions and OSes and other Software on their servers so that people could download it to their laptops or students could bring CDs and get it written for them. They avoided OpenBSD CD ISOs. But they did give every one a Free DVD that could be booted to install all BSDs and many Linux distributions.
I can think of several options which benefit OpenBSD, some of which make things better/more affordable for other people in your country; Install by ftp and make a donation,
In some countries like mine an FTP install through the Internet is not a viable option for most. I have the privilege of using the Internet connection of my company. Otherwise on my own I cannot do an ftp install. the speed quality of connectivity is very very poor. Not to mention the very low data transfer limit per month and the huge cost per MB for extra traffic. May be Egypt is differ rent :-) I don't know about Stuart. I think you are from US or some where in Europe. its a totally differrent situation in the 3rd world countries when it comes to Internet, Electricity etc. :-) If you take the population at large. Of cource it is differrent in some parts of cities and places where Industries/IT companies are concentrated where we have better connectivity and Power supply. Kind Regards Siju
