On 07/05/2009 11:09 AM, Ankur Sinha wrote:
-- The Free media requests are not spread evenly across India (obviously). Hence, some contributors (like me) only receive only one or two requests from our regions. I can contribute more than that ( at least 10-20 _locally_) on a monthly basis. On the other hand, I remember reading someone mass producing media (pressing to get rates as low as 2-3 rs a media??) and hence having extra copies that are going waste (not being used). Hence, there is untapped potential and also unfilled requests. Can anyone think of a way to use the resource?
I haven't heard of anyone doing good quality media replication for 2 Rs. If you find specific details, do let us know. What we try to do is to fund the media replication costs for the media that is useful for events and ambassadors and provide them with the means to reach out to more people. Funding free media efforts is problematic not because of the media replication costs but the distribution costs. More on this below.
-- Does anyone have knowledge of Ubuntu's project. We could take some points from there (if its okay to do so, that is). I've *heard* its very effective.
It is effective but it is also funded in a very different way. I think, you are missing the bigger picture here. Canonical, which is the privately funded startup behind Ubuntu wanted to reach more users in a crowded space of multiple distributions about five years back and spend millions of dollars on free shipments. While that has certainly proven effective atleast in the short run, I doubt we are going to follow that model. Red Hat, the primary sponsor behind Fedora is a public company with share holders and if money is going to be spend, it has to be done in a sustainable way. Free media shipments essentially relies on the community to help itself by supporting one another voluntarily. This is by nature, a different scale of operations. If anyone has ideas on doing it better keeping in mind the limited budget, feel free to share it with us.
Rahul