SO, WHAT SHOULD WE DO? Organizations like Mandrake, RedHat, Turbolinux, SuSe etc. do sell their 'Products', which are well-packaged, at a small price. I implore you all to consider buying their offerrings, instead of paying the ISPs & telephone companies a fortune to download & using them for free. This cuts in two directions. It adds to the sales volumes of OSS promoting companies(so, officially competing propri. software) & at the same time makes these companies stronger to go ahead & develop high-quality software.
FWIW, last I checked mandrake did not have any way of accepting money from India, if you are unwilling to give out your credit card number over internet. I don't have club sbscription, but I would be willing to get one if I have means to do it easily.
I think if a LUG is generating some money, then at least one box pack copy of one major distro. can easily be purchased. But that may not be a priority for an LUG.
Most distros. have special concessions to LUGs like copying etc. e.g. RH allows LUGs to distribute some of it's product which is otherwise forbidden. PLUG does avail that. That is the reason we make everybody sign a membership form before giving out CDs.
At PLUG, we try to promote OSS including commercial OSS software as appropriate. Suse/Novell people gifted us a box-pack CD set which many a PLUG members have availed AFAIK..
But things are slow. It will take another two years IMO for any visible change in general.
I am not saying we should not buy OSS software. Just pointing out the current efforts in those directions as well..
HTH
Shridhar
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