Date: Sun, 16 Jan 2005 14:14:24 -0800 From: Murray Stokely <murray@freebsdmall.com> To: Ceri Davies <ceri@submonkey.net>, doceng@FreeBSD.org, www@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Request to be listed in your Software Vendors Link page Message-ID: <20050116221424.GL25849@freebsdmall.com> In-Reply-To: <20050114100844.GL49329@submonkey.net> References: <00e601c4fa13$12260260$0300a8c0@tccslook> <20050114100844.GL49329@submonkey.net>
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On Fri, Jan 14, 2005 at 10:08:45AM +0000, Ceri Davies wrote: > The current situation with cheap CD vendors is suboptimal to say the > least. We now have both alllinuxcd.com and cheeplinux.com waiting for a > response on outstanding requests, and none of the people who look after > this page want to touch it because of the response they get from within > the project when/if they add a vendor such as this. I'm not a disinterested party, as I have been involved with Walnut Creek CDROM and FreeBSD Mall, Inc. for over 8 years now. However, I've stated my feelings many times. I like our old policy. We never used to list this kind of company before and I see no reason to now. We should only list CDROM vendors that do one of the following things : 1) Contribute money to the FreeBSD Foundation (pledges to do so are irrelevant, real contributions after they have already been made should only be counted. A pledged percentage of profit is especially irrelevant, since most such businesses are break even with little or no profit after salaries) 2) Employ committers to work on specific or general FreeBSD projects. 3) Make substantial advocacy contributions to FreeBSD (a Linux company that sells FreeBSD as an afterthought is not likely to do this). 4) Serve a geographical region that is not well-served by existing CDROM vendors. I don't recall seeing any requests from vendors where there was a doubt in my mind about if this was a grey area. All requests seem to be from one well defined class of vendor : 1) Vendors that employ committers directly, make hardware and monetary donations to other committers, spend money on FreeBSD promotion and advocacy, etc. 2) Vendors that make substantial advocacy contributions. 3) Vendors started by a small group of people in a country that they feel is not well served by existing larger North American FreeBSD distributors. Usually these come and go over time, but if there is a niche they are filling we should list them. 4) Vendors that sell CDs for about $2 each, take a dime of profit for themselves, and are detrimental to the project by stealing sales from vendors of the first 3 categories. - Murray
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