On 02:17, Fri 27 Mar 09, Theo de Raadt wrote: > > I've purchased hardware from Wim multiple times over the last two or > > three years and found him to be fast, reliable and helpful in every > > order. In each, he's provided far superior service than any other > > vendors I've dealt with in the last decade, though some of those have > > been good, too. > > It is a real pity the project did not find him nearly as reliable when > it came time to pay the money rightfully owed to the project from CD > sales. > > As to your comments about CDs becoming obsolete, well perhaps they > slowly are becoming so, but all other physical mediums share these > problems of obscelence and delivery. I think (hope?) that people buy > our releases for the art, and as an opportunity to give back to > sustain the project (or in Europe, at least the failed hope for that).
That's the only reason I buy the cd-sets. I only open the box to go through the inlet, smile at the cartoons, grab the stickers, put them on hardware without stickers or with some empty space (sometimes have to put them over a very old sticker) and put away the box on the shelve so I can showoff to my friends that I have all the releases in original form. When it comes to installing machines nothing beats PXE + bsd.rd I did get all the cd-sets from wim though, so I have no idea how much I sponsored the project with this. Looks like not much. The two stores listed on the orders website for my country (.nl) just ask too much for the cd's (they add like 10 euro and also shipping). Let's hope things get resolved or some other distributer with the same nice customer support as wim steps up. > > As for USB sticks, sorry, but there isn't much room on a USB stick for > a 8-cartoon plot with fish as characters. No, please dont remove the artwork. > > The oft-mentioned model of "download it from the FTP sites, and there > are enough honourable people in the world who will make a donation" > has been an steller failure. The spirit of enlightened giving is > dead. The only way to activate it is by begging. So, from time to > time, we beg. > > ... and how well does that work. A request for money to buy 3 new > infrastructure machines gathered more donation money in 1 week > ... than all the other donations for the previous 6 months. I often > wonder how many of those were "FTP install donations". Very few, I > think. Either there aren't a lot of people, or they are poor, or > they lack the spirit. Shrug. > -- Michiel van Baak mich...@vanbaak.eu http://michiel.vanbaak.eu GnuPG key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x71C946BD "Why is it drug addicts and computer aficionados are both called users?"