Our competitors are selling their product for about $50 per unit and many people would say that by selling for less we are saying our product is worth that much less. Their logic is that if product A costs $50 then it is worth $50 and if product B sells at $5 then product A is 'obviously' the better product.
Selling the product for $1.25 is insultingly low and really says the product is not really worth buying at all! The Free Software Foundation is not against people selling or profiting from Free/OpenSource software. The GPL is not against it either. The caveat is that when the product is sold (or even given away) the potential recipient is given the address of where they can get a copy of the Source Code. Personally i would tend to go further and give them the address of where they can download the product for free. When selling the product it would be ideal if the 'vendor' could keep a fair profit in addition to covering costs. How else are we going to get established distribution networks to sell the product? If established retailers are never going to sell the product then what other distribution networks are we going to use? Perhaps we should rely on drug-dealers or some similar dodgy-looking network to take care of pushing our product for us! Yes, ideally some of that money would go back into TDF but at the very least some needs to cover the costs, including time & effort, storage and all the rest of the costs that people don't notice when they are committed to to fighting for a good cause. I would say $5 or even $10 is about right, or £5 or £10 in the Uk. It is just enough to make people realise that it is a legitimate product without being as much as the market would be willing to spend if they realised how good the product is. Regards from Tom :) ________________________________ From: Dave Johnson <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sun, 26 December, 2010 13:47:53 Subject: Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Fwd: LibO DVD fulfillment web-page I am not officialy sanctioned. I am selling at cost and $1.50 per unit donation to the TDF. Dave Johnson On Dec 25, 2010 11:21 PM, "Michael Wheatland" <[email protected]> wrote: On Sun, Dec 26, 2010 at 10:23 AM, Dave Johnson <[email protected]> wrote: >>> Just FYI... The D... Dave, I didn't realise that the Marketing team had assigned an official DVD distributor. Congratulations if this is the case. I know there was discussion about this a few months ago on the marketing list, and I know that we are creating and selling the documentation through a not for profit organisation based in Australia. How much will the DVD be selling for, and what percentage of any profit will be contributed back to The Document Foundation? Thanks, Michael Wheatland -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to [email protected]<marketing%[email protected]> List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/marketing/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity *** -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to [email protected] List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/marketing/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity *** -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to [email protected] List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/marketing/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
