-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 September 13, 2003 09:59 am, Anguo wrote: > Being a club member is pretty pointless... we have to read > slashdot or newsforge to get to know the latest news about > Mandrake.
Being a member of the club is a method of supporting the distribution, not an invitation to insinuate oneself into executive decisions of the company. Similar in fact to some of the "volunteer developers" that inhabit the cooker list whining that they were never told about this decision prior to it becoming fact, and should have been asked for feedback first. DRECK. The company isn't run by pessimists or it would be dead already. It almost was, and still could be if the alarmists get their way. The articles on /. and News Forge were posted prior to any announcement that anything newsworthy was happening. If the originators had a clue about business they'd know that one doesn't make any announcements about such until there's something to announce. What's pointless is the level of alarmist B.S. (that doesn't stand for brown sugar) coming from some posters on the Mandrake mailing lists and those "news" sites. Fact: MandrakeSoft is fighting for it's life, they aren't "selling out the users, ignoring the volunteer development members, prostituting the distribution." Whatever you may think being a Club Member or buying a box set from retail or the Mandrake Store are not an excuse to believe that you have a right to dictate how the company generates revenue. This sale of ad space is not infringing on users in any way, and I for one am willing to adopt a "wait and see" attitude to see if it ever does. > http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/12/1315224 > http://newsforge.com/newsforge/03/09/12/157237.shtml?tid=3 > http://www1.mandrakelinux.com/en/mdkads.php3 > http://www.mandrakesoft.com/partners/advertising > > Advertising during installation, in screensaver and in > browser bookmarks: the idea is certainly a necessary one, > maybe even a good one, but as far as I am concern, it's > already a public relation failure, only the latest one is a > series of such mistakes (like that of failing to officially > state that the removal of the Republic of China's flag was > not -?- due to Communist China's pressure on them -?-.) It's a "Public Relations Failure" because of shit such as this. You already know there's no advertising in screen savers and yet you insinuate that it will happen. You know NOTHING about what will happen in the future unless you're part of the management team. There will be no advertising in the screen savers, there will be ONE ad in the installation graphics. That's what I read from the MandrakeSoft web-site and I'm inclined to believe them. As for bookmarks why not? The default bookmarks are easily changed, the default screen savers are easily changed, and bowing to "political pressure" is exactly what the complainers are asking the company to do now. <rhetoric> Are people ever satisfied? <\rhetoric> > Any comment on the new (or rather old but augmented) policy? > > They removed the pricing from their page, but it got copied > on /. Sure, to keep the bullshit "debate" thriving. Some people delight in whining and bitching. /. is one of the gathering places for such individuals. > /.ers have written both positive and negative feedback... > what do you girls (and guys) think? > > > Augustin I think this is a waste of bandwidth. I think the people complaining the loudest fall into two distinct categories: 1.) Control freaks that want all of the decision making power with none of the financial responsibility of being sure a company survives. 2.) "Freebooters" that have never paid dime one to support the development of Mandrake Linux and pride themselves on being "Members of the Open Source Community" because they use a GPL compliant downloaded operating system for everything but the games they've purchased. Then whine that they can't play their fscking games with free software. Many of those games were likely "kazaa'ed" onto their drives anyway. Unlike the fortune tag in my signature I'm not afraid to speak up, or to vote my conscience. This entire diatribe is about as relevant and valuable as the post it's a reply to. If you don't like the direction being taken to ensure the survival of this distribution then use something else. It is open source, and therefore all about choices. Without regard to the "sensibilities" of those that think "Corporation" is equivalent to "Evil." Regards; Charlie Mahan - -- Edmonton,AB,Canada User 244963 at http://counter.li.org Cooker on kernel 2.4.22-8mdk 10:06:17 up 12:39, 1 user, load average: 0.32, 0.32, 0.28 Conscience doth make cowards of us all. -- Shakespeare -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE/Y0j2G11CaRuZZSIRAidzAJ9iyo8yOa90ljnfA2AIXoYCkC7rcQCffkrz qw79huytz6C/xdJJIqPFzWo= =GX1t -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
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