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Supporting Community Projects 88

Posted by Hemos from the support-them dept.
Lulu has announced a new program of creating boxed sets around particular technologies. They've got Fedora Core 3, OpenOffice, Bugzilla, as well our little Slashcode . The boxes include documentation and the code on CD with the money going back to support the communities building it. Lulu also does a whole bunch of cool stuff around self-publishing for on-demand items.
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Supporting Community Projects More

Supporting Community Projects

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  • More money to the developers? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by RandoX ( 828285 ) on Friday November 05, 2004 @07:45AM (#10733334)
    I guess I'm not sure what the point is of this. If you want to support these projects, why not just donate it directly to them? Surely Lulu has to take the cost of physical production out of your money before giving proceeds to the project. Wouldn't it be cheaper to download it, burn your own, and give your $10 - $25 straight to the development effort? I know a pretty box and manual are nice, but does it really come with anything you don't get digitally?

    • Re:More money to the developers? (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I think it's a bit of a ripoff actually. There was a windows and mac OS cd for sale once that someone packaged to make gimp install on their machines, and in the end it was only an automatic installer for something you can download anyway. And people want you to pay for this?.

      I dont know, it doesnt sound in the spirit of the GPL thats all

    • Re:More money to the developers? (Score:5, Informative)

      by salutor ( 664890 ) on Friday November 05, 2004 @07:56AM (#10733377) Homepage
      I think part of the point of this stunt is the manuals, which are at least potentially better than anything you could get elsewhere. The books are written by Colin Charles http://www.bytebot.net/blog/index.php [bytebot.net], who is an interesting guy. Lulu's strength is obviously in providing a distribution platform for unconventional books; in essence this is just a way to package software with the books.

    • Re:More money to the developers? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Jameth ( 664111 ) on Friday November 05, 2004 @08:00AM (#10733390)
      I think in part it is that the sale of these can go to people who would not be downloading the product to start with, so it generates more revenue than would otherwise be there.

      Also, having an object for sale aids people in donating because it removes the burden of choosing how much to donate from their shoulders. Without such an avenue, many people worry about how much to donate, and whether or not they should send some sorts of messages with a donation, and a million other things. That's also why all projects of even a moderate size should have an FAQ section on giving donations.

      Further, in the case of this product, it is essentially just a wing of the original group making a boxed, distributable product, as the project receives the profits, and the project is entirely volunteer anyway.

      • I agree, and I also think it helps to have the nice shiny boxed set available with documentation, etc.

        Speaking from my own experience trying to introduce Linux to coworkers, the more packaged it looks the better. Just yesterday I offered a coworker a couple of options for buying a bootable Linux CD, and he opted to bypass the $2.95 versions in favour of the more expensive CD with training videos bundle.
        • Also, for some reason, some high end training material and applications used to be sold in CD format, with all the information.

          By simply printing a copy, binding it, and attaching the CD (about 0.0000000...001% of the costs) the customer thought it was worth an extra grand or so...

          good business!
          • I use a combination of the <a href="http://www.mixonic.com">Mixonic</a> custom CD-R printing and <a href="http://www.jewelboxing.com/">Jewelboxing</a > cases to make up bundles for my web clients. I deliver all of the project deliverables (code, images, initial database loads, etc.) as well as video tutorials on using the content management system, photo galleries and other tools installed on the site (using <a href="http://www.debugmode.com/wink/">Wink</a>) . The packa
            • I use a combination of the Mixonic [mixonic.com]; custom CD-R printing and Jewelboxing [jewelboxing.com]; cases to make up bundles for my web clients. I deliver all of the project deliverables (code, images, initial database loads, etc.) as well as video tutorials on using the content management system, photo galleries and other tools installed on the site (using Wink [debugmode.com]) . The packaging uses one of my templates, but both the template for the CD and the packaging has slots for their logo and company information, so each bundle is completely

    • Re:More money to the developers? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Elvon Livengood ( 654636 ) on Friday November 05, 2004 @08:02AM (#10733398)
      If you want to support these projects, why not just donate it directly to them? Surely Lulu has to take the cost of physical production out of your money before giving proceeds to the project. Wouldn't it be cheaper to download it, burn your own, and give your $10 - $25 straight to the development effort?

      You're right, as far as you take it. If your main concerns are 1)minimize your costs and 2)maximize your $ contribution to the Open Source community, then you shouldn't buy the Lulu packages. Download, burn, and donate.

      But don't forget that what Lulu is selling, really, is convenience. There may well be some folks who would rather send some $ to Lulu (and feel good about supporting open source in the process) than go through the download-and-burn process. And don't discount the convenience of having well-printed documentation! If all you have at home is a little inkjet printer with its expensive cartridges, printing a few hundred pages of docs is neither easy nor cheap.

      The open question is whether the market for these packages will percieve Lulu as offering enough value to balance the cost. Looks like they don't, for you. I'll have to look closer to decide for myself. But if the folks at Lulu have things set up right, then pretty much everyone benefits.

      I wonder why they didn't package the Mozilla suite? Maybe they're waiting until Mozilla, Firefox, and Thunderbird are all at 1.x or better.

    • This is quite old, Slashdot is covering this _now_?

      Incidentally, they also support independent publishers, and some well known guys have published through these guys.

      I think of them as the equivalent of Cafepress [cafepress.com] for Books, Music and CDs (ofcourse, they do other things, too).

      Not bad, atleast it's a beginning attempt at offsetting the centralistic corporate culture in these areas.

    • Here's the point (well, a point) (Score:4, Interesting)

      by mysticgoat ( 582871 ) on Friday November 05, 2004 @10:10AM (#10734175) Homepage Journal

      I guess I'm not sure what the point is of this. If you want to support these projects, why not just donate it directly to them?

      I see quite a bit of value in Lulu's products. When I want to encourage support for FOSS among people who are unfamiliar with it, these package deals could be just the ticket. This is something I could send as a gift to a relative, or pass around in a meeting while I was presenting the advantages of a windows to linux migration.

      I will probably buy the OpenOffice set in the next month or so and if it is as well done as it looks on the web site, I expect to make heavy use of it next year (without ever spinning its CD).

    • Seriously, what else can you buy for the geeky type? We are already buried in the clutter of zillions of toys, and you can't exactly put,on you xmas list, Amiga 3.01 ROM chip (for A1200, not A4000), oh, the only place you can get it is www.blah.com item #blah. Well actually I did, but I had to buy it myself, give to my wife (who posed as having bought it herself) to give to my sister in law, to give back to me.

      You can imagine my feigned surprise...

    • Money certainly is important in supporting open projects, but there are other things that need to be done as well. I'd say there are three main categories:

      * monetary support--help feed the coders

      * technical support--dontate time and skills to find and fix bugs, or add functionality

      * moral support--advocacy/evangelism, marketing, publicity.

      The first two everyone has been aware of for some time. People have donated $ to software causes and sent in patches since before the dawn of GNU. The last point i
    • The point seems to be increased visibility and availablity of open source products, with the benefits of earning some cash for the developers.

      Why do so mnay people keep using language like "support these projects" when they ought to just say "buy". "Buy" is not a dirty word.

  • Support (Score:1, Interesting)

    by cuteseal ( 794590 )
    I'm all for supporting open source communities, but I wonder how much of a slice Lulu actually keeps? Maybe a paypal d0nation would be Better...

    • Re:Support (Score:4, Insightful)

      by salutor ( 664890 ) on Friday November 05, 2004 @08:05AM (#10733405) Homepage
      A PayPal donation would obviously be better in the sense that it would provide more money to the community in a more direct way, but some people who might not otherwise donate will be motivated by the idea of getting a physical something in exchange for their money. It's sort of like Public Radio offering you a coffee mug or a sweatshirt for your donation.

      Keep in mind that Lulu was founded by Bob Young (Red Hat), so this is not that much of a stretch.
      • A PayPal donation would obviously be better
        A PayPal donation would obviously not be better, they seem to be either crooks, or incompetent, or both.

        http://www.aboutpaypal.org/ [aboutpaypal.org]
        http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=125307&cid=105 00173 [slashdot.org]

        • Better for these sorts of transactions is E-Gold [e-gold.com], or one of the similar internet gold currencies.
          Pro: Low fees (about 0.5 cents minimum), inflation-proof, more private than credit cards or checks, trivially easy to set up accounts, truly international.
          Con: Hard to get gold in your account, and don't even dare use IE if you have a significant amount of gold in your account; transactions are irrevocable, so password-stealing worms can steal your gold!

  • Awfully vague descrptions (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 05, 2004 @07:48AM (#10733355)
    So pretend that you don't know what Fedora Core is, and try to figure it out from this description:

    The Fedora Project is a Red Hat sponsored and community-supported open source project. It is also a proving ground for new technology that may eventually make its way into Red Hat products. It is not a supported product of Red Hat, Inc.

    Colin Charles is a Fedora developer and has previously written countless how-tos, FAQs, tutorials and curricula. He co-authored a Linux desktop guide available via the United Nations Development Program's International Open Source Network.

    In Fedora Core 3: Made Simple, Colin brings his experience together in an easy-to-use guide that stresses learning by doing. Buy the book or the software separately, or get both in a boxed set. Heck, it's up to you. No matter what you buy or why you buy it, most of the profit goes to Colin and the development community.

  • Ready To Run Software (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SuperBanana ( 662181 ) on Friday November 05, 2004 @08:07AM (#10733414)

    The boxes include documentation and the code on CD with the money going back to support the communities building it.

    Many years ago, I worked as an intern for Ready To Run Software, which did something similar; they'd take common packages such as GNU textutils or gcc (which were not part of ANY Unix back then, and Linux was still in its infancy), clean 'em up, make a good installer (again, before the days of autoconf and clever install scripts), provide some decent documentation, and package it all with an executable wrapper onto the tape medium of your choice, for just about -any- Unix in use. Lastly- they supported the product with various contracts and telephone support. Now, they have a porting center with a zillion different Unixes, all set up to play nice, where you can port stuff from Odd Box A to New System B.

    I couldn't find it now, but I know back then you could search on a couple of RTR employee email addresses and find stuff in changelogs for most of the core GNU software packages; often times they were one of the very few companies doing actual QA work on these packages (I know, my internship was in QA) and submitting patches and bug reports; they're probably responsible for a lot of the improvements in portability in these packages. RTR also did all the behind the scenes work for the Oreilly powertools CD...

    Cool company. I liked working for them- and not just because of the Free Candy table with lots of chocolate (all the machines, and there were almost 50 of them, were named after chocolate. My powermac running linuxppc was 'orange', which took some finagling- "Orange chocolate?").

  • Updates (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tomalpha ( 746163 ) on Friday November 05, 2004 @08:14AM (#10733433)
    I'd like to know how they deal with updates - new versions, patches. The big OSS projects all have their fair share of vulnerabilities and need constant patching.

    For the less technically oriented end-user, to whom I assume these boxes are pitched, some form of automatic download + patch would be a must.

    Can't find anything on lulu.com that talks about this - without it, the product is going to be dangerous (unpatched vulns galore)...
    • Slashcode already includes automatic updating.

      There is a live neuron level interface directly into CmdrTaco's brain.
      Every time he plays with the HTML it automagically changes worldwide.

      Microsoft tried to impliment this technology, but unfortunately they couldn't find a suitable port to plug into. Early test versions ended up making Bill crosseyed, and even made monkey boy balmer blush.
      • (-1, OffTopic), but I recall you earlier expressed some interest in slashdotgrab.pl (which I mentioned as an AC, before I joined up a few days back :)), the script for downloading and formatting slashdot comments and marking the ones you've already "read". If you want to check it out, I'm happy to put it up somewhere if someone can point me to some free, easy hosting that can survive a slashdotting :) Cheers, Si
        • If its a script, then put it in your journal right here on slash.

          Sure, its not totally geared for it, but if you want it out there, and its just a single flat file, why the heck not!
    • Fedora will update itself automagically. As for the other projects... well how often do you see OOo releasing security patches? Anyone interested in bugzilla or slashcode should be knowledgable enough to know how to handle updates.
      Regards,
      Steve

    • I'd like to know how they deal with updates - new versions, patches. The big OSS projects all have their fair share of vulnerabilities and need constant patching.

      For the less technically oriented end-user, to whom I assume these boxes are pitched, some form of automatic download + patch would be a must.

      Can't find anything on lulu.com that talks about this - without it, the product is going to be dangerous (unpatched vulns galore)

      just like buying any other "boxed" software then isn't it...

    • That's part of the point of doing this through Lulu. They support a system that can be constantly updated. As far as I can tell, when you order a box set, they print out the latest version onto the CD and send it to you. This is what "Print-on-Demand" means. They don't print it till you order it, so if there's been an update, you'll get it. Lulu already has systems like this for books, so it's likely that this is what's going on with the software as well.
    • Lulu isn't actually the publisher, these kits were published by the projects themselves, or by a member. And of the projects in there now, only Fedora has an aggressive update cycle. The docs include info on how to get updates.

  • I checked out some of their cool stuff .... (Score:4, Funny)

    by scupper ( 687418 ) * on Friday November 05, 2004 @09:08AM (#10733708) Homepage
    and found this book I might actually buy:

    Living in Vertical Time [lulu.com]
    by Brian Narelle
    Description: The Teachings of Murray the Buru. These ruminations on life, love and peace were inspired by a donkey named Murray, a special soul housed in a 600 pound body. My friend, my teacher...my '"buru". (104 pages)
  • This really is the perfect gift for our not-so-geekily friends. I'm mostly taking about the Open Office package. This is a great opportunity to give a couple of friends (and maybe a cousin or two) some cool software (which I've been trying to get them to try) and having it look like a "real" product, rather than some doo-hickey I want them to download. As a benefit, the project gets a few cents. Kudos to Lulu. Now advertiste the hell out of it. I want to see a copy of Open Office under every Festivus pole t

  • I found that Lulu.com's "ISBN Plus" service was the easiest and cheapest way to get my book listed on Amazon.com and BN.com. For less than $200 you get an ISBN and inclusion on these two major sites. You still need to do all the marketing myself, but there are numerous discussions in Lulu's forums about "guerilla marketing" your work. Getting it reviewed on Amazon and BN, creating Amazon lists of best-selling items that are similar to yours and including yours on that list, creating a "So you want to..." page and including your item on the page along with similar items, uploading a complete description/cover/excerpt for your product, etc. Seems that some of these would apply to marketing your software as well.

    I'm curious about how effective getting listed on Amazon and BN is for software. Do many customers bother searching these sites when they're shopping for software? Or do they use dedicated tech sites, or just go right to Google for the software? I'd like to see some comments posted in a few months by some of the software sellers who've tried this.

    • creating Amazon lists of best-selling items that are similar to yours and including yours on that list, creating a "So you want to..." page and including your item on the page along with similar items

      Thanks for the warning! Now we all know to ignore those features on Amazon, if we didn't already.

  • In the last 10 years much, MUCH better web forum software has come down the pike (such as scoop and phpbb). While slash was great in the mid 90's, it's looking a bit worn and dated now that it's the mid 00's.

  • Cafe Press? (Score:1, Redundant)

    by tajmorton ( 806296 )
    Isn't this similar to what CafePress [cafepress.com] does? CafePress does self-publication too or lots of stuff. CDs, books, T-Shirts, etc. Is there something I'm missing?

    -- Taj
  • I understand where the "just donate through PayPal" guys are coming from but they're forgetting one important fact: people are lazy.

    There are a lot of very competent computer users that have no idea that free/OSS software that is often superior to it's proprietary cousins is available... and rather than looking all over the internet for the best free/oss app for their needs, then downloading a crapload of disparate parts, then the documentation, then some HowTo they'd rather pluck down their cash on an a

    • Re:This is great!!! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by innerweb ( 721995 )
      people are lazy
      Lazy people are not an issue, it is the people who do not have time we should be concerned with... Lazy people will not be a market to worry about, as changing wil require effort that they are too lazy to do untli a critical mass is reached in the market and they no longer feel lazy about a change. Time conscious professionals who demand productivity at a bottom cost are the market to target. They are the ones to make changes and take a chance on something different, especially if it can
  • I thought we all loved to hate Slashcode for antiquated and bloated HTML that doesn't even begin to approach standards compliance. Why would we want to buy it? :)
  • Are they from the future?

    Because Fedora Core 3 hasn't been released yet. If you go to the Fedora website [redhat.com], you'll see Fedora Core 3 Test 3 and Fedora Core 2. So...how do these people have Fedora Core 3, given that it doesn't exist?

  • Someone please explain to me why anyone in their right mind would want to buy Slashcode?
  • I took a quick glance at the site, and I'm not sure they are following the GPL correctly. They have a link to the Fedora sources, but I don't think that satisifies section 3 of the GPL. Section 3 of the GPL states that if you deliver GPL binaries to somebody you either must 3a) deliver the source code along with the binaries; 3b) provide a written notice valid for at least 3 years to provide the sources for the cost of media duplication to any third party; or 3c) provide a link to the sources if you ship

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