hey,
I just came across this. Can someone please update us on its status?
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Media_production#India_2
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Media_production#India
I'm still burning media on my laptop by hand and sending them ;)
On Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 10:37 AM, Ankur Sinha sanjay.ankur@gmail.com wrote:
hey,
I just came across this. Can someone please update us on its status?
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Media_production#India_2
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Media_production#India
I'm still burning media on my laptop by hand and sending them ;)
I guess this link [1] will help you .
[1] http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog/2010/03/02/i-want-a-fedora-dvd-dont-kno...
Kushal
http://www.zyxware.com/requestcd/%252Fresults/field_distribution_name%3A%22F... has fedora DVD for Rs. 30 and CD for Rs. 20 + Shipping. If we can get a nice budget we can workout a price with them for a lot of CDs.
- Hiemanshu Sharma.
On 01/04/2010, Kushal Das kushaldas@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 10:37 AM, Ankur Sinha sanjay.ankur@gmail.com wrote:
hey,
I just came across this. Can someone please update us on its status?
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Media_production#India_2
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Media_production#India
I'm still burning media on my laptop by hand and sending them ;)
I guess this link [1] will help you .
[1] http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog/2010/03/02/i-want-a-fedora-dvd-dont-kno...
Kushal
http://fedoraproject.org http://kushaldas.in _______________________________________________ india mailing list india@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/india
On Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 4:42 PM, Hiemanshu Sharma hiemanshu@fedoraproject.org wrote:
http://www.zyxware.com/requestcd/%252Fresults/field_distribution_name%3A%22F... fedora DVD for Rs. 30 and CD for Rs. 20 + Shipping. If we can get a nice budget we can workout a price with them for a lot of CDs.
For any given release we have noticed that LFY carries the DVD media. Past performance is never an indication of future results but irrespective of whether LFY or, the other technical magazine carry media or not, it would be good to have a system where local UGs, vendors/distributors are encouraged to retail the media and, make a decent/reasonable profit by the way.
It would be a good idea to look for easier ways to incubate more such retailers and, for starters asking folks like zyxware as to whether they are in a position to offer stalls at events and sell their media. For colleges and other institutions it makes more sense to seize the opportunity to get tree(s) refreshed or, synchronized so that they can have install-fests or, a machine capable of doing LiveUSB production.
Offering the media for "free" (as in gratis) doesn't seem to get us very far. The demand is significantly high (cf. the Freemedia requests) and, no budget would be "nice" enough.
http://www.debian.org/CD/vendors/info is a model that we could use should we choose to.
hey,
On Sat, 2010-04-03 at 18:43 +0530, sankarshan wrote:
On Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 4:42 PM, Hiemanshu Sharma hiemanshu@fedoraproject.org wrote:
http://www.zyxware.com/requestcd/%252Fresults/field_distribution_name%3A%22F... has fedora DVD for Rs. 30 and CD for Rs. 20 + Shipping. If we can get a nice budget we can workout a price with them for a lot of CDs.
For any given release we have noticed that LFY carries the DVD media. Past performance is never an indication of future results but irrespective of whether LFY or, the other technical magazine carry media or not, it would be good to have a system where local UGs, vendors/distributors are encouraged to retail the media and, make a decent/reasonable profit by the way.
If it would be good to have, I suggest we initiate something to bring it about.
It would be a good idea to look for easier ways to incubate more such retailers and, for starters asking folks like zyxware as to whether they are in a position to offer stalls at events and sell their media. For colleges and other institutions it makes more sense to seize the opportunity to get tree(s) refreshed or, synchronized so that they can have install-fests or, a machine capable of doing LiveUSB production.
Again, if it "would be a good idea", I suggest getting down to working out how we can bring this about.
Offering the media for "free" (as in gratis) doesn't seem to get us very far. The demand is significantly high (cf. the Freemedia requests) and, no budget would be "nice" enough.
How much is the budget really for free media requests?
http://www.debian.org/CD/vendors/info is a model that we could use should we choose to.
-- sankarshan mukhopadhyay http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog
Like I've already said above, we know what to bring about but haven't started anything to achieve it yet. Can we please have an irc meeting dedicated to this?
If we can get vendors to provide media at cheap prices, I'm sure the demand for free media would go down to a certain extent. I've come across vendors pricing media at rs 200, rs 170, which is pretty expensive.
Time -> April 10, 1930IST? Agenda:
* read the above email, think of how to get the ideas actually working. * <add more here?>
As always, I request as many people as possible to attend the meet. Ambassadors are imperative here since we need as much feedback and as many ideas as possible.
On Sat, Apr 3, 2010 at 7:35 PM, Ankur Sinha sanjay.ankur@gmail.com wrote:
How much is the budget really for free media requests?
I don't recall ever seeing a budget per se for Freemedia given that it is a volunteer driven activity.
There are two points upon which I'd like to dwell. One, the problem cannot be solved by throwing "money into the game" and, the second, the actual need to have Freemedia program in India.
Taking up the second part. Since Freemedia is a volunteer driven effort, the gates open for a small time-period and, then they close down. The current method of handling Freemedia opens up a few areas of concern:
* not all media requests get entertained * there is no method to track down or, follow-up those who did receive media * there is no way to keep track of whether receiving the "free" media and attempting to install and use it led to a happy user ie. did the install work, was the hardware working and so forth * the current form of Freemedia has no means of bringing the recipients into the mainline communication channels followed by the project * there are far too many duplicate requests or, requests from similar postal code regions which indicate a lack of a collaborative framework
Which is why it might turn out to be a good idea to close down Freemedia for a while and, point all requests to paid media channels. Creating the stickers for the DVDs (to make it look 'professional') isn't too costly and, that can probably be arranged. But, putting in a trail of accountability and, more importantly, feedback between the request and, the fulfilling of it would be more important.
Now, if you do media in bulk, like we did till F11, a single DVD costs around 12 INR. Add around 3 INR for the CD mailer envelope and, around 40 INR for courier charges, the total amount required to ship a single DVD to a recipient is 55 INR. That is over 1 USD at the current rate. And, if we were to consider a budget of say 1000 USD, you'd be able to ship an equivalent number of DVDs only. If you look at it realistically, that is mere drop in the ocean of requests. Which is why I don't think we can solve this issue with "money" or, budget. I've been pointed out innumerable number of times that ShipIt was the contributing factor to Ubuntu's popularity in India. I don't disagree with that assessment. What I don't feel comfortable is entering into an escalating budget race that has no clear upside.
I think we are asking the wrong question. It isn't "how much money do we need to solve the problem of media" but "how much infrastructure can we help incubate that would allow media requests to be entertained and fulfilled". If we look at the second question, we end up entering zone of possibilities - right from college students stepping up to do small businesses of media retail to colleges and institutes being looked at as mirrors. And, everything in-between.
Currently, mirrors are a major pain point. We don't have enough of them. And, yet, we have a growing set of people from institutions who are contributing to and participating in The Fedora Project. Why are they unable to convince their college authorities to set up mirrors ? That might be a part we should be looking at. For the existing mirrors, do they have a proper set of admins in place ? For example, GLUG-NITH's mirror has gone down in quality so much that it might pretty well not exist. I don't know what is happening with NIT-Durgapur or Agartala or, the other NITs that came up on the list for discussion. With Shakthi doing his FedEx bit, how much is that being consumed to have updated bits for participants ?
When we are discussing the issue of media (Freemedia ?), let's think over all the above bits as well.
Hey,
On Sun, 2010-04-04 at 10:51 +0530, sankarshan wrote:
On Sat, Apr 3, 2010 at 7:35 PM, Ankur Sinha sanjay.ankur@gmail.com wrote:
How much is the budget really for free media requests?
I don't recall ever seeing a budget per se for Freemedia given that it is a volunteer driven activity.
There are two points upon which I'd like to dwell. One, the problem cannot be solved by throwing "money into the game" and, the second, the actual need to have Freemedia program in India.
Taking up the second part. Since Freemedia is a volunteer driven effort, the gates open for a small time-period and, then they close down. The current method of handling Freemedia opens up a few areas of concern:
- not all media requests get entertained
- there is no method to track down or, follow-up those who did receive media
I'm afraid I see no way of doing this.
/me adds to agenda
- there is no way to keep track of whether receiving the "free" media
and attempting to install and use it led to a happy user ie. did the install work, was the hardware working and so forth
We can start a feedback system, but looking at the number of replies we get to free media tickets, I don't expect much input.
/me adds to agenda
- the current form of Freemedia has no means of bringing the
recipients into the mainline communication channels followed by the project
/me adds this to agenda
- there are far too many duplicate requests or, requests from similar
postal code regions which indicate a lack of a collaborative framework
One reason for this is that people who successfully get media are not converted into contributors who can at least share their media. Hence, we end up sending media to neighbours at times.
Which is why it might turn out to be a good idea to close down Freemedia for a while and, point all requests to paid media channels. Creating the stickers for the DVDs (to make it look 'professional') isn't too costly and, that can probably be arranged. But, putting in a trail of accountability and, more importantly, feedback between the request and, the fulfilling of it would be more important.
We can point the tickets to vendors, request users to provide feedback on the concerned vendor. We can set up a system to rank vendors or something similar to provide some sort of incentive to vendors?
for eg, we can announce a 6 month period where we will direct equal number of requests to each vendor. Based on their service, price, feedback, we will direct media after the 6 month period to the best vendor. Sort of releasing a "tender" I guess?
/me adds to agenda
Now, if you do media in bulk, like we did till F11, a single DVD costs around 12 INR. Add around 3 INR for the CD mailer envelope and, around 40 INR for courier charges, the total amount required to ship a single DVD to a recipient is 55 INR. That is over 1 USD at the current rate.
I send media using speed post at rs 25 around India. My costs are high because i purchase dvds and burn media on my laptop :$.
And, if we were to consider a budget of say 1000 USD, you'd be able to ship an equivalent number of DVDs only. If you look at it realistically, that is mere drop in the ocean of requests. Which is why I don't think we can solve this issue with "money" or, budget. I've been pointed out innumerable number of times that ShipIt was the contributing factor to Ubuntu's popularity in India. I don't disagree with that assessment. What I don't feel comfortable is entering into an escalating budget race that has no clear upside.
I think we are asking the wrong question. It isn't "how much money do we need to solve the problem of media" but "how much infrastructure can we help incubate that would allow media requests to be entertained and fulfilled". If we look at the second question, we end up entering zone of possibilities - right from college students stepping up to do small businesses of media retail to colleges and institutes being looked at as mirrors. And, everything in-between.
Speaking for myself, I wouldn't like to set up a business because burning media on our desktops/laptops isn't economical at all. I can charge per media delivered, but that won't cover the number of media wasted, for which I pay from my pocket.
Currently, mirrors are a major pain point. We don't have enough of them. And, yet, we have a growing set of people from institutions who are contributing to and participating in The Fedora Project. Why are they unable to convince their college authorities to set up mirrors ?
Again, speaking for myself and MIT, Manipal here. The trouble is very plainly stating, the lack of usage. Our labs still stick to windows, faculty is still ill informed about Linux/Fedora. Apart from that, the wifi infra is still not in place, call it beta if you want. At this stage, the college refuses to set up a mirror. It's the same thought stream as we had for the FUDCon -> they want to see "definite results", which cannot be given. All we say is that its better for students and will improve placements, decrease costs etc, but this seemingly isn't enough compared to the infra required to set up the mirror.
/me adds to agenda
That might be a part we should be looking at. For the existing mirrors, do they have a proper set of admins in place ? For example, GLUG-NITH's mirror has gone down in quality so much that it might pretty well not exist. I don't know what is happening with NIT-Durgapur or Agartala or, the other NITs that came up on the list for discussion. With Shakthi doing his FedEx bit, how much is that being consumed to have updated bits for participants ?
/me adds to agenda
When we are discussing the issue of media (Freemedia ?), let's think over all the above bits as well.
As always, I request more Ambassadors to join the discussion. I'm only seeing a bunch of folks interested right now. Discussion is one of the *major* duties of an Ambassador. Please at least reply to the mailing list. The discussion currently doesn't require any prior coding knowledge or anything of the sort so everyone should be able to participate.
The agenda for the meet currently is:
* How do we track/follow up fulfilled requests w.r.t free media? * How do we collect feedback on installation etc ? * How do we get the requestees closer to the project ? * How do we convert more requestees to providers ? * How do we get more vendors working with us ? * How do we improve service and decrease vendor costs ? * How do we encourage students/LUGs to provide media, even for profit ? * How do we encourage more institutions to mirror for us? * Check up on current mirrors * How do we get more ambassadors to reply to the lists and join discussions ?
It's quite an agenda and needs a lot of minds to pitch in with ideas.
The time stands at 1930 UTC on Saturday, April the 10th. Please mark your calendars :)
Hi,
--- On Sun, Apr 4, 2010 at 10:51 AM, sankarshan sankarshan@fedoraproject.org wrote: | I don't know what is happening with | NIT-Durgapur or Agartala or, the other NITs that came up on the list | for discussion. --
I am in touch with Prof. Anupam Jamatia from NIT, Agartala.
He uses Fedora for his lectures, and coursework. For example, C programming for the Electronics and Communication Engineering (ECE) department and Production Engineering department (PE). Prof. Kunal Chakma from NIT, Agartala also uses Fedora in their Systems Software Lab that students use for their coursework.
Regards,
SK
On 04-Apr-10 10:51 AM, sankarshan wrote:
On Sat, Apr 3, 2010 at 7:35 PM, Ankur Sinhasanjay.ankur@gmail.com wrote:
How much is the budget really for free media requests?
I don't recall ever seeing a budget per se for Freemedia given that it is a volunteer driven activity.
There are two points upon which I'd like to dwell. One, the problem cannot be solved by throwing "money into the game"
I agree. No money, no game. And we should not be playing games here.
Which is why it might turn out to be a good idea to close down Freemedia for a while and, point all requests to paid media channels.
Great, incentive to setup online DVD/CD store. But these also need a mint copy, I hope those will still be available ? Or one has to download and sell ?
Creating the stickers for the DVDs (to make it look 'professional') isn't too costly and, that can probably be arranged.
This is a trivial issue.
trail of accountability and, more importantly, feedback between the request and, the fulfilling of it would be more important.
What for ? The paid service will exist on perform or perish basis.
Currently, mirrors are a major pain point. We don't have enough of them. And, yet, we have a growing set of people from institutions who are contributing to and participating in The Fedora Project. Why are they unable to convince their college authorities to set up mirrors ?
Bandwidth is still an item of luxury in this country. A more pragmatic approach with the help of Redhat can be setting up mirrors with ISPs like Reliance, TATA, Bharti, BSNL and others and not to forget NIXIs.
I am willing to engage with the respective guys in the eastern region with a proper mandate from Redhat, as these entities need legal agreements with those entities whose existence is well defined under laws of the land. Most of the LUGs and groups like these may not / do not fit the bill.
When we are discussing the issue of media (Freemedia ?), let's think over all the above bits as well.
The problem as I see, is not with the existing mirrors and their current state, which can change from good to bad and reverse from time to time. The problem is to have many more mirrors, and how to achieve that ?
with Regards, ASHWIN
Currently, mirrors are a major pain point. We don't have enough of them. And, yet, we have a growing set of people from institutions who are contributing to and participating in The Fedora Project. Why are they unable to convince their college authorities to set up mirrors ?
As someone who had once walked along this path, I have a feeling that this is very difficult to sustain without teachers who "get it".
If you want a student to spearhead this in a college, then you need to be looking at second year students. But how many second year students do we have who are regular contributors? Third and final years don't count because by the time they will be able to cut through the bureaucratic red tape her time will be up, and unless you have a junior lined up the whole effort will be a waste. Right now it is a bit hard to expect a free software contributor [1] in every batch with the patience, tact and skills to work around the red tape. :-)
Running a public mirror will have some side-effects on the institute's network and if you can not get influential members of the faculty to buy in to the idea, then you are in trouble. Given the level of expertise of the system administrators hired by some of our "premier" institutes, this can be a major pain.
Having said that, IIT Madras seems to have got it right.
That might be a part we should be looking at. For the existing mirrors, do they have a proper set of admins in place ? For example, GLUG-NITH's mirror has gone down in quality so much that it might pretty well not exist.
This is heart breaking. Being out of the country, I have not been using it myself. Last I heard that there was work going on in the computer centre causing a temporary interruption in service.
But honestly, I don't expect them to put up a good show, and bandwidth or hardware is not the problem.
Cheers, Debarshi
[1] Those who think of contributing only when Google Summer of Code comes around the corner do not fall under the definition of free software contributor.
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Ankur Sinha -
Ashwin -
Debarshi Ray -
Hiemanshu Sharma -
Kushal Das -
sankarshan -
Shakthi Kannan