🚀 go-pugleaf

In src@scuzzy.in-berlin.de (Heiko Blume) writes:

>>well, perhaps a cd-rom-of-the-every-other-month club, or gnu updates
>>quarterly with other things coming out in the intervening months.

>which brings a question to my mind: what the hell should one charge
>for a cd-rom with 300MB+ of compressed sources on it when you charge
>$210 for a 60MB tape??
Hey come on, the charge is being calculated by adding media cost and
handling charges, not by looking at the bytes the media contains.  In
my opinion, $210 would be a reasonable charge for, say, 10 HD or
SD floppy disks, even if that media contains only a fraction of the
number of bytes contained on a tape or CD.  Look at the CD:
All that's needed to get one to the customer is to take it off the
shelf and put it in a mailing bag, label it and send it off.  The
total time needed to distribute one copy should be around ten minutes.

>another question is if new version will be charged for as initial
>mastering (i think so). that would make a monthly or even quarterly
>update to expensive, i guess.
This only depends on the cost of a single CD, which propably is
related to the size of the edition.  If one CD costs - say - $20 or
$30 to the customer, a quarterly update containing all the software
posted to the software newsgroups as well as the latest GNU stuff (I
could imagine other useful things contained on a software developer's
CD) is likely to be successfull.  If - on the other hand - you begin
counting bytes, and charge $500 or whatever for the CD just because it
contains so and so many programs, the project is likely to fail, and
propably will not even play in the initial cost.  Also, you'll soon
end up being blamed for selling the software instead of just selling
your work, possibly resulting in legal problems as well.

Someone somewhere said, that $3200 is the charge for a CD including
500 disks and the initial costs.  Divide this by 500, and you get
$6 media cost per disk.  Now add whatever risk charge you consider
fair, and handling + shipping, and you'll end up somewhere in the
range I suggested before.  I'd also calculate to send several disks to
computer magazines for free, just to spread the word.

The major problem in this might be the money initially required.  I'm
quite sure that there are people out there who'd take the risk.

Regards, Hans
-- 
Hans H. Huebner		Data:  hans@trabant.at ( ..!tuvie!trabant!hans )
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