Status of the Free Media Program

[Yuan Yijun]

2009/11/19 John Poelstra <poelstra at redhat.com>:
> Hi Free Media Leaders,
>
>
> 1) What is the state of the Free Media program and how is it going?
>

The use of Trac greatly simplified my work -- I always need to ping
each recipient to get their exact post address as well as their phone
number. The phone number is very important because without it, the
media may get returned (because the post office cannot find the
recipient). With a trac system I no longer need to send emails by
hand. One problem with Trac is they no longer reply my email.. maybe
they are scared by this advanced tool.

Since susmit and inode0 are creating new rules for FreeMedia, I'll
barely follow. My suggestion is as efficient as possible. Thus I don't
want to send it to individuals -- and I haven't done that this year,
only distributed some goodies at local events (release party, SFD and
others). I got no indication that these media I sent are valuable.
Last year only very few people gives feedback. Most think I am one
agent or sales of RH, do you believe that? If a new website is going
to be designed, please add more steps to make sure they know who we
are.


> I also wondered if it was a good idea to be pointing people to something
> they can't have or even request on our main "Day of Release" page:
> http://fedoraproject.org/get-fedora ?
>

I also sent email to tell them where to buy. It is fairly easy to buy
a boxed version of Fedora 12 at either a book store or
http://amazon.cn at a very reasonable price. Also there are sellers on
Taobao (like eBay) who offer Fedora discs -- these sellers can get a
better discount from ems system while I cannot.

In one word: if one has a computer that you can install Fedora on it,
then the price of Fedora is no longer a concern. So just point them to
some faster and more reliable way.

One possible enhancement is to allow pre-sale, selling other items
related to Fedora, or find a sponsor and distribute with AD. The cost
is too much for anyone who want to make AD though.. Another dream is
if 1GB SD card was as cheap as a CD, we could send SD card instead.




-- 
bbbush ^_^