On Fri Sep 12, 2003 at 03:02:49AM +0100, Adam Williamson wrote:

> > > > http://www.mandrakesoft.com/partners/advertising
> > >  
> > > > no. 
> > >  
> > > I'm all for it. I replace the screensaver and bookmarks straight away  
> > > anyway, and it's a simple way to fund your favourite distro. It's not  
> > > as if we're seeing in-yer-face popups or anything. 
> > >  
> > > Cheers; Leon 
> >  
> > me doesn't use screensaver :) 
> > nor default bookmarks :) 
> >  
> > about the install  
> > ( may be will skip a CD install  and will use urpmi.update && urpmi
> > --autoselect ) 
> 
> My point wasn't really about whether it affected us directly. Obviously
> it won't - given that we use Cooker, I don't know if we'll even ever
> *see* the offending adverts. The point is I think it's a horrible way of
> generating revenue which is being introduced by stealth - I only found
> out about this because OSNews discovered the page and flagged it up in a
> news story, I haven't seen anything from a Mandrake source announcing
> this, and it hasn't been mentioned on this list at all, which seems a
> little odd. I'm more concerned with the horribly unprofessional
> impression that an installation and first boot sequence plastered with
> adverts will have on a new user, compared to distributions which have
> none.

http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/mdkads.php3

I think your concerns are unfounded, and I also think you're being a little
silly.  Do you close your eyes when you're driving around and see billboards
that advertise stuff?  Do you close your eyes and mute the TV when the
commercials are on?  Do you leave the theatre because you paid to see a
movie and not a car commercial before the feature starts?

I think you're a little out of line here, personally.  It's not that
intrusive, there will be no "plastering" of ads, and once you modify the
bookmarks, they're gone.  How many times do you plan to install and actually
watch the entire install (does anyone do that anymore?)

Besides, it's ok to advertise links to OSS and GNU stuff but it's not ok to
advertise Linux-related commercial stuff to make a couple bucks so we can
have another version of Mandrake in the future?

I hate to say it, but it cracks me up how people are so against advertising,
our business model, and things we do to make revenue so that the developers
and others in the company can eat and afford to spend all of their time
working on the distro.  Sounds like the community would rather have a nice
distribution but all the developers should be homeless and starving.

(And no, I won't bother contributing to this thread anymore)

-- 
MandrakeSoft Security; http://www.mandrakesecure.net/
Online Security Resource Book; http://linsec.ca/
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