[Linux-aus] LA's SFD CD Run

Dave Davey daved at windclimber.id.au
Tue Aug 25 15:03:42 EST 2009


On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 12:26:03PM +1000, Jonathan Oxer wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 11:45 AM, Michael Still<mikal at stillhq.com> wrote:
> 
> > Agreed. I personally think in this modern age of broadband handing out
> > CDs at all is a bad idea. I figured I was less likely to win that
> > argument though.
> 
> Assessing this based purely on the efficiency of transferring a chunk
> of bytes from one person to another: I agree entirely.
> 
> In this particular case though the point of the exercise is only
> obliquely to be found in the bytes of data on the CD itself. It's more
> about the value perceived by the recipient who is accustomed to
> forking over $$$ to receive an install CD for proprietary software and
> will (hopefully) get a warm fuzzy feeling from having it given to them
> free of charge and being *encouraged* to share it around without
> feeling the guilt of participating in what they've been told over and
> over again is "software piracy". It's a physical representation of the
> difference between the proprietary and FOSS approaches on both
> financial and philosophical levels.

All true.  And also, despite all the hype about the national broadband, the
reality is many people are still using slow and unreliable links where
downloading the potential contents of a CD is simply not going to happen.
And there are still people who do not connect to the internet at all!

Dave

-- 
David F. Davey
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Australia                                            daved at windclimber.id.au



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