Online Vendors List

susmit shannigrahi thinklinux.ssh at gmail.com
Thu Feb 18 17:01:33 UTC 2010


> There are two questions here:
>
> * Is a listing of online vendors useful?
>
>  I believe the answer is yes, because FreeMedia cannot guarantee
>  service to every single person that wants Fedora, and because in
>  some parts of the world it is much more convenient to pay a small
>  fee for media.  We want to give people every possible route to get
>  Fedora even when a download or FreeMedia shipping is not possible.
This is perfect.

> * How can we better maintain the listing of online vendors?
>
>  Susmit, you are working on some improvements to how we track online
>  vendors, correct?

Yes. I am going to push it out latest by next month.

> It seems like it would be an easy task for either
>  contributors on the FreeMedia or Marketing teams to:

>  (1) send a form letter email to all vendors on the list a week
>  before each release to (a) remind them of our release date and
>  encouraging them to grab the new release for offering their
>  customers, and (b) inform them that we'll be checking back within
>  1-2 weeks to ensure they have the latest copy available.

>  (2) go through the current list within a week or two after a release
>  to ensure that they've followed through, and if not, deactivate them
>  from the listing and send a second email saying we'll restore them
>  when they send us an email confirming they're providing the latest
>  Fedora again.

That is a nice idea and easily doable.
Let's do it then.

>> > IMHO there must be one place to get Media and for which we as Fedora
>> > Project need to take care for:
>> > - http://fedoraproject.org/ $COUNTRY /get-fedora
>> > and it's mirror!
>>
>> I am not sure what do you mean.
>> Do you mean we don't need the offline vendors at all?
>> There are countries, say India where bandwidth charges are exorbitant
>> and there are vendors who sell it from 20INR.
>> In fact, we are thinking of promoting them better so to make number of
>> freemedia requests less.
>
> That's right.  It doesn't make sense to me to restrict Fedora
> distribution just to places with excellent download bandwidth.
>
>> > Also imho a vendor who sells fedora media (expect the free media
>> > project) should donate us with the revenue he earns with "our"
>> > stuff (Code, Artwork, usage of Trademark etc.). But that's only my
>> > opinion; also my opinion is that there should be only FEDORA where
>> > you get medias OR official authorized PARTNER (!= vendor) ...
>>
>> Yes, ideally they should donate us something.
>> But the licensing (GPL and most others) and current trademark
>> guidelines  *does* allow others to sell Fedora (and the codes)
>> legally.
>
> We cannot and should not demand that anyone donate to Fedora for sales
> of free software.  I don't even think we should think of it as
> "ideal."

You are right. Thanks.

>> I think if we keep a tab on them and list their prices against their
>> listing, they will be forced to bring down the prices.
>
> We shouldn't concern ourselves with market pricing pressures.  That is
> a problem that will solve itself according to demand.

It is true that we don't want such thing. I hate that idea myself.

But I was thinking about a specific case. Say, there are fifty such
vendors in a country.
So a person willing to buy a media must browse 50 different sites to
find the cheapest one.
It is highly possible that he will give up and request a freemedia
after he finds first ten sites offer the disk at 200INR (5USD) whereas
the 50th site may offer the disk for 30 INR.


-- 
Regards,
Susmit.

=============================================
http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/user:susmit
=============================================
Sent from Maharashtra, India


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