Dear Theo,
Don't we do enough?
You already do too much.
Regarding the swag. The entire OpenBSD project now probably gets 1/4 of revenue out of CD
Why don't you do for the website software downloads what you do for the CDs? Make users pay the downloads from the official website as you make them pay for the CDs. No need to change the license. No need to care about parallel free downloads, they will be there soon for poor users or smart users than can type "openbsd download" in a search engine. Add lifetime of OpenBSD updates without extra payment (a mailing-list can announce them). Add 30 days money-back guarantee! (any reason qualifies). Add invoice.
Would that work every year?
Every day.
I doubt mindshare of this sort works repeatedly.
No doubt it will work but I guess I'm the only one on earth to know that. Of course, I already ear all possible arguments claiming it can't work, it won't be free/open software anymore etc. Openbsd won't just be gratis from the homepage, that's all. It works for me for more than three years for a very small software much worse, much smaller, less well known than the OpenBSD system. That's the buying of OpenBSD CDs that made me think about this business model. I'm lazy so I didn't want the hard stuff of building and sending CDs. Numerically it works 100 times (yes a hundred times) better than a permanent call for donation, that's what I measured, how surprising!, that is what I still benefit every day. You won't have to sell CDs or teeshirts anymore, just coding, paying electricity and coders. -- Au revoir, 09 51 84 42 42 Gilles Lamiral. France, Baulon (35580) 06 20 79 76 06
