On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 9:09 AM, susmit shannigrahithinklinux.ssh@gmail.com wrote:
But we have a *lot* of LocalContacts, but does that fulfill any of the freemedia requests? I have not seen any.
Very true. Local contacts can serve requests which originate from within a rang of a few kilometres. Anything beyond that boils down to the same postage issue. Even the next city is out of reach for local contacts. People are not willing to travel and collect the media themselves. It is much easier for them to obtain a pirated Windows CD.
One alternative is to use VPP [1] . If we can keep some option as Susmit suggested, "I want to pay" or "I don't want to pay" and if free media is not "free as in free beer", then we can send the media through VPP and collect the money from India Post once the media is delivered. I am not sure though what will happen if the delivery is refused. According to India Post site, it will be returned to the sender and the sender needs to pay any "outstanding dues", not sure what outstanding dues mean but that can be found out easily. Once a freemedia request is accepted, the acceptor can mail the requester and take his confirmation before mailing the disc through VPP. In this way the chances of denial during delivery will be reduced a lot. The requester will have to pay approximately Rs 50 (cost of DVD + postage).
[1] http://www.indiapost.gov.in/Netscape/ValuePayableArticles.html