From: Szechuan Death [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Theo de Raadt wrote: > > Don't the OpenBSD developers already work hard enough, that now we > > are supposed to do even more boring business oriented things for you > > all? > > > > Every release, more people download OpenBSD and fewer > people buy OpenBSD. > > But the solution is not to make OpenBSD developers "web > businessmen". > > That is a road to slower development. > > The solution is not to complain about users not buying something which > ostensibly takes pride in being available for free; it is to take > advantage of good ideas when they are offered. This is such an idea. > Using it to make money, well, that's kind of dumb. (Though it could > work, much later.) The chief utility of a "virtual store" of products > fully supported in OpenBSD is that it provides the OpenBSD team a > convenient way to do three things: [snip]
And in a perfect world, these three arguments would mean something. In reality, you lose time maintaining this thing for the end result that users will just end up complaining anyway because the vendor changed chipsets on them anyway and kept the same model number/revision number. And how much clout does it take before a hardheaded vendor actually cares about the market share that OpenBSD users make up out there? Yes, some do consider it, and these some vendors are not totally lost. They can be convinced, although a lot of the time they don't take convincing. They do the smart thing without having to be beat about with reasoning and proof. You actually think that a silly store is going to mean anything to a vendor who cares nothing about the Open Source movement and already has incentives from Microsoft to not produce specs for anyone else? That said, there could be some advantage for certain small groups of users to carrying out the idea, but listen when the developers say they don't have time or energy to put into maintaining your little web business. And before you say "they wouldn't have to", think about it. The conclusive answer of "is it supported" will more often than not come directly from a project contributor. Why bother them when this garbage when they can spend their time working on truly valuable projects? DS
