On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 10:22 PM, Paul W. Frields <stickster@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > === FreeMedia === > https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-advisory-board/2009-November/msg00035.html > * Thread is public, anything to discuss here? > * is there some way that we can fund shipping media to people to ship > out to users > ** John: if we fund this what would we not be funding? IOW what > trade-off would we be making? > *** Dennis: not fund there outbound postage, but provide them media so > they can ship more at the same cost and give professional media not > burnt and hand written. > * NEXT ACTIONS: > ** Continue discussion on fedora-advisory-board > ** Follow-up I'd like to make a couple of comments about Fedora funding the FreeMedia program. I was violently against this in the past for reasons I have explained elsewhere (discussions on the FreeMedia mailing list) but I have softened a bit. First I would like to note that Fedora has in the past and continues to help the FreeMedia program financially although it has been done more in a hit and miss fashion I think than as a regular funding item. For the F10 and F11 releases, for example, I have had leftover pressed media on hand and during the final FreeMedia period I have sent out fairly large numbers of these to people requesting images through the FreeMedia program and this cost is being covered by Fedora (both the cost of pressed media and the cost of the shipping). We don't want to waste pressed media and this seems to us to be a valuable way use it when it is available. We don't order pressed media with this use in mind however. The two common suggestions for Fedora helping have serious limitations due to the logistics involved in worldwide distribution being performed by many people. Consider providing pressed media but leaving the contributors to cover postage. Postage is fairly expensive for some contributors, most only send a small number each month (we ask contributors to try to send at least two pieces of media, some do more but typically it is probably a single digit number). So, how would we ship very small numbers of pressed media to hundreds of FreeMedia contributors around the world so they in turn could send them to people local in their regions? This is a logistical nightmare and probably not worth the cost and effort in the end (at least I don't see how it could be worth the cost involved). And of course there are delays getting the pressed media and further delays shipping it around so valuable time is also lost doing this. The second common suggestion is for Fedora to let the FreeMedia contributors continue buying their own supplies and doing the work the way they do now but reimburse their reasonable expenses. This has the same logistical problem. How to efficiently and without sending Max to the nearest high bridge would we ever arrange such small reimbursements to so many people so frequently? Looking at it with the logistical limitations in mind we could try picking one or two people in various regions to provide direct help to. I think that help would need to be in both ways though, pressed media and postage. We can't ask someone to self-fund $100 a month in postage. (Some do that but we can't ask them to on a regular basis.) My general fear about doing this is that it will fundamentally change the character of the program. Will volunteers continue to contribute at their own expense when that guy over there is doing it and Fedora is paying for it? Maybe I'm cynical, but I think that would inevitably hurt the morale of the volunteers. So here is what I would suggest at this point in time if the board would like to try to help fund some part of the FreeMedia project as an experiment. We tend to have inordinately large numbers of requests from certain regions (these are large because of need in those regions). I think we should work with Susmit to see if there is a way to provide some direct help to a small number of contributors in India to help with the volume of requests in that region. I think we could learn a lot by doing that and help where the problem is the most severe today. John _______________________________________________ fedora-advisory-board mailing list fedora-advisory-board@xxxxxxxxxx http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-advisory-board
