Using Computer Stores to Spread Open Source? 407
DigitalRaptor asks: "I live in a small city with about 4 or 5 computer stores, most of whom I know personally. None of these stores offer Open Source software on the computers they sell (Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, etc), and none of them have anything in place to educate their customers about spyware and viruses. I'd like to approach them with all of the relevant information in a presentable format. I think this would be a great way to spread OSS and to help the average consumer at the same time. Is there a project out there for this purpose that local advocates could use to approach computer stores in their town?"
Killing the revenue stream... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Killing the revenue stream... (Score:2)
Re:Killing the revenue stream... (Score:3, Insightful)
They are motivated by a need to profit, not because they are greedy corporations, but because they need to pay the rent, by the sales and service staff a fair wage, etc. These things require an income stream.
However, there is nothing inherent in open source that prevents making aprofit from it. They can't charge for the code, but as I recall they can charge a reasonable fee for the media its distributed on. They can give classes on its use. They can char
Re:Killing the revenue stream... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Killing the revenue stream... (Score:5, Interesting)
The open source idea is good and whenever I work on a system I'll try to present customers with open source options.
Re:Killing the revenue stream... (Score:2)
Re:Killing the revenue stream... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Killing the revenue stream... (Score:2, Informative)
Ummm... many reasons. (Score:3, Interesting)
If you're a smirking misanthrope, you probably get a kick out of delivering the same condescending lecture to all your spyware/virus-infested "luser" customers. Why would you ever push some free to
Re:Ummm... many reasons. (Score:2)
Randal?
Re:Killing the revenue stream... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Killing the revenue stream... (Score:2)
Re:Killing the revenue stream... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Killing the revenue stream... (Score:2)
Yes, withholding facts is dishonest: Its commonly referred to as a Lie By Omission. It is also one of the most common (and despicable) lies in society and business. Practically every advertisement in existance uses some variation on this.
The behavior is not going away any time soon, so deal with it.
make it tangible (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:make it tangible (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:make it tangible (Score:2)
By selling it at their standard markup. It's Mozilla that he's suggesting sell it at cost.
Revenue from sale of closed-source browsers and email clients? Not bloody likely.
They can provide added value by installing Free Software at no significant cost to
Re:make it tangible-HSS. (Score:2)
While such a package may not be of interest to all businesses or retail customers, it's just anot
Re:make it tangible-HSS. (Score:2)
Yep, if you or I or anybody else wants to sell a $1000 boxed version of Linux, that's fine. As long as the source is offered or included with it. I wonder about the trademark issues with Mozilla/OOo/etc logo's
Re:make it tangible-HSS. (Score:2)
mozilla DID sell nice books and boxed copies... but their store is "down for renovations" at the moment.
Re:make it tangible-Economics (Score:2)
Re:make it tangible-Economics (Score:2)
Let me see;
Retailer's happy, OSS author's happy, customer's (presumably) happy. So where's the downside?
Re:make it tangible-HSS. (Score:2)
The biggest obstacle I see with this is the trademark problem a couple
Re:make it tangible (Score:5, Insightful)
Toss in a manual or something, make the box a little heavier, charge the printing cost, and you get a bit of free advertisement as well (and heck, you know that people might buy the box just to get the manual).
Now, toss in a bit on top for the Mozilla project, the FSF, the Apache Foundation, or whoever is selling the software, and you have something that is eye catching and benefits us all.
It's funny how people reject a cheap or free product as crap, but you know that they do.
Re:make it tangible (Score:4, Interesting)
Normally, they do. [mozilla.org]
The store is closed at the moment, though when it is open they do sell manuals, manuals with CDs, CDs, or a whole kit from the Mozilla store. I think I remember them giving discounts for bulk purchases, starting at 10 units. Wouldn't hurt to ask.
Google Cache (Score:2)
Re:make it tangible (Score:2)
From what I remember you can buy either just Firefox+Thunderbird on CD, or you can buy them with a manual as well. They aslo offered 10 packs.
Re:make it tangible (Score:2)
If you're approaching this from a security standpoint, and want to provide the best experience for the end-user, Mozilla (and many other open-source outfits) need to sell packages to the vendors. Sell a stack of boxes, manuals, adhesive CD labels, and printed CD sleeves to the local shops. That way, Joe's Computer Shack can buy 200 boxes and not have to worry about the software going out of date. Just burn a decent-quality CD-R of the latest build, pop it in the sleeve, and snap the box into shape. Or b
Re:make it tangible (Score:2)
what mozilla really needs is the ability to update without re-downloading everything. Its kind of a kick in the teeth to sell users a boxed copy of a peice of free software only to have them have to download the whole thing again soon after to get a security patch.
TheOpenCD (Score:5, Informative)
Re:TheOpenCD (Score:3, Interesting)
Pop in the "Store X" cd with software (and free updated cds, of course). Have a problem with one of the programs? You know who to contact.
Earlier post with all the software from my disk. [slashdot.org]
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ideals about "Freedom" don't really matter to people if you can't pay rent. You'd do well to remember that before you started preaching to them about how they should run their business.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is Insightful? The submitter wasn't asking how to get small computer stores to martyr themselves for Open Source. I think he wants to know how to make it worthwhile for them to offer it to customers. The fact that the stores want to stay in business is a given. Maybe you're confusing open source with Free Software. They aren't one and the same. There are lots of businesses making a living off open source. The submitter also mentio
Re:Why? (Score:2)
> Software. They aren't one and the same.
All Free Software is open source. Are you one of those people who labors under the delusion that it is not legal to sell copies of programs licensed under Free Software terms?
> There are lots of businesses making a living off
> open source.
There are lots of businesses making a living off of Free Software.
Re:Why? (Score:2)
You seem to have the two kinds of "free" mixed up here. Free Software generally refers to "free as in beer," meaning the author charges nothing for the software. The code itself is not necessarily given out with such programs.
Open-Source Software seems to be what you're referring to, in which the code is freely available for distribution. There is a difference in the two.
Re:Why? (Score:2)
Yes, English sucks, but Americans wouldn't accept it if we called it Software Libre.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:2)
There are geeks that still shop at Tiger Direct? [slashdot.org]
Re:Why? (Score:2)
How to use open source to make a profit. Easy offer your help setting up and configuring it.
Re:Why? (Score:2)
That said, the trend in the software industry is to suppor the bottom line not with product, but with services. We have seen organizations such as Red Hat and IBM excel based on services, not on a specialized product.
So, the question becomes, why do people bother with the loc
Re:Why? (Score:2)
More expensive by what... $5/hard drive? $20/computer?
In my experience, small-shop hardware prices run typically about 50% more than Fry's, which means 60-70% more than bottom-dollar web merchants. And they typically stock 0.1-0.01 times the selection of Fry's. Thus, whenever I go in there, it's not likely they have what I want, and when they do it's priced so outrageously I leave anyway. Doesn't take much of that kind of reinforcement to keep me away.
I believe it could be better. Small computer+ele
Do I smell a business model? (Score:4, Funny)
No. Please post a sourceforge link when you're done ;)
The Open CD (Score:3, Informative)
Save a couple bucks (Score:2)
http://www.theopencd.org/ [theopencd.org]
LUGs? (Score:2)
software for presentation (Score:2)
I've wanted to do this too (Score:5, Insightful)
Same goes with programs like AVG, Spybot, etc...we use the utilities in the service department as part of our spyware/virus cleaning services, but that's as far as it goes.
Trust me, I'd love to load our systems with Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, etc., but the retail culture here doesn't allow it!
Re:I've wanted to do this too (Score:2)
Re:I've wanted to do this too (Score:2)
Re:I've wanted to do this too (Score:2)
Re:I've wanted to do this too (Score:2)
I've known of a few shops that get a sizable chunk of money for that sort of arrangement.
Re:I've wanted to do this too-Donate your organs. (Score:2)
Well, *IF* the software is covered under the GPL, just include the source on the CD. How is this a problem?
If you're gonna troll, you should at least attempt to be intelligent about it.
Same here (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Same here (Score:3, Interesting)
I work in a professional environment. Sometimes I have to produce Word documents, sometimes I have to accept them, and sometimes the ones I accept I have to edit and redistribute.
If Word screws up the formatting, it's embarassing, but at least I used Word - my arse is covered. If I choose to use OOo and it screws up the formatting, it's my fault for using a non-standar
the Windows Toolbox (Score:5, Informative)
Go talk with them & try (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe if one computer store would have such evenings, they could get some money back of it (parts, peripherals.. se
Ahh *cough* (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that if you were a consumer, purchasing computer equipment, and asked if they had the item, and you said you'd like to buy it, then they would probably listen.
If you said "my goodness, it appears that you're not carrying open source software... I don't want any today, but I think that you should carry it," that you'll sound pushy, no matter what you do, and that you're more likely to drive store owners away from this.
Seriously, did you change faiths last time someone came around your neighborhood asking you to do so?
Re:Ahh *cough* (Score:2)
I'm in a shop picking up a Serial ATA Controller, Seagate hard drive, and 2 gigs of ram, (total $500+). I asked the guy if they carried linux. I really needed it as my hard drive was dead and being replaced, I wasn't evangelizing. They didn't have it , they did know what it was, and apparently had little interest in getting it. This is also the last time that I'll do business there.
When I lived outside of Seattle, my local shop had all the major linux distros for $5 each as a value adde
Re:Ahh *cough* (Score:2)
Nah, but really, jamming your agenda down someone's throat won't help either. Speak softly, big stick, and all of that...
Similar Q - best distro for donated computers? (Score:3, Interesting)
I have in fact a P-166 sitting right here that was donated to an org I work for that I was thinking to try out the plan upon, since I wanted to wipe the HD anyway before passing it along. Possibly the org might even use it as an office computer.
Re:Similar Q - best distro for donated computers? (Score:2)
Re:Similar Q - best distro for donated computers? (Score:2)
Any, configured properly. You do not have to install the kitchen sink, though that's the usual default.
Slightly related: Wikipedia DVD (Score:2)
And managed to get to no on the amazon.de software charts.
That much to the (always and often) voiced question about who would pay for something that could be get on the net for free.
Users (Score:4, Insightful)
To expand Linux into this market, everything needs to pass the grandmother test. If she doesn't read a manual, san she install it and make it work with less than 15 minutes of phone support?
As experienced users, we often forget that most people have much better things to do with their time than learn how to make a user hostile computer work.
My grandmother (Score:2)
My grandmother doesn't know how to install office or windows.
She does sometimes use my computer if she ever needs information. I have Firefox installed, and I direct her to places like wikipedia.org or the cia world fact book if she's ever interested in geographical information about other countries.
Also my grandfather uses a word processor to type out his family tree documents that he works on. He wouldn't know the difference between
Re:Users (Score:2)
There is no reason not to be commercial (Score:3, Interesting)
Offer to preload your own Linux distribution. It could be a cut and paste from Ubuntu for example.
Include plenty of advertising for your support services and wait for the phone calls to start.
Most likely you will have to cut the stores in on the deal, perhaps they will take the hardware work and you get the software work.
Previous discussion (Score:3, Interesting)
Open Source CD Lending For Public Libraries? [slashdot.org]
IIRC one important conclusion was that the libraries feared getting in a position where users started to expect support from them regarding the products. I could imagine that computer stores would have similar reservations.
It is difficult to sell free software CDs in shops (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=03/12/14/
Tried and True method (Score:4, Funny)
Eh, and who is going to support the oss...? (Score:2, Insightful)
To my knowledge, no one actually sells a (support) license or a retail box for any of these products. (Maybe OO.org... but definitely not FF or T-bird.)
So, who is going to support these additional software packages? Who is going to be responsible for the software if/when it breaks, or if/when Firefox leads to a virus infecting the computer?
Geeks often forget that a major part of
Re:Eh, and who is going to support the oss...? (Score:2)
Re:Eh, and who is going to support the oss...? (Score:2)
Microsofts 'fix' typically consists of 'format and restore.' Heck, that's most PC manufacturers as well. Learning how to use the event log and google is invariably better in all situations.
Re:Eh, and who is going to support the oss...? (Score:2)
You can demand all you like.
Nine times out of ten, the tech in the shop that sold it is gonna end up getting the call.
Re:Eh, and who is going to support the oss...? (Score:2)
"We'll include this better browser, as well as Internet Explorer. If you want to learn more about it, you can buy this user guide (which we're reselling from the Mozilla store) or you can pay $25 to come to our open-source class held every other Tuesday night."
Re:Eh, and who is going to support the oss...? (Score:4, Informative)
You should really ask someone to update mozilla.org then -- they seem to think that "[t]elephone support at 1-888-586-4539 is available for Firefox 0.9 and above, Thunderbird 0.8 and above, and final Mozilla release versions 1.5, 1.6, and above. $39.95 per incident." When you mention this to the webmaster, mention that you saw the text above at http://www.mozilla.org/support/ [mozilla.org].
Who is responsible if/when Internet Explorer breaks, or if/when it leads to a virus infecting the computer? Last I checked, Microsoft won't "be responsible" either, in terms of cleaning up messes they allow to be created through bugs in their software.
Support is often a consideration with enterprise-level deployments. For such cases, there are third parties that are more than happy to offer support for OSS software. Sun themselves offers support contracts for OpenOffice.
For home users of Office, Microsoft offers two free phone support incidents, but only if your copy came from them. If it came preinstalled, you'll have to call your PC vendor (who will likely do very little to help) or pay Microsoft $35 per incident ($245 for "advanced issues"). I'd imagine that most people didn't buy a retail copy of Office, which means that there's no free support for the average user.
Microsoft offers an 800 number only for the fee-based support. If you bought a retail copy of Office (which is the example you gave), and are taking advantage of one of your two free incidents, you'll be calling (425) 635-7056.
Maybe before citing the myriad of support options available from OEMs at reasonable costs to home users, you might consider the real-world availability to those users. Bundled software is up to the PC manufacturer to support, and generally their support ends by suggesting use of the system restore CD. This means that bundled software is virtually unsupported, and the average user isn't likely to pay tons of money for a retail box -- they'll borrow from a friend long before, and anyways are so used to being pushed aside by ineffectual support departments that they expect very little in terms of vendor support anyways.
Re:Eh, and who is going to support the oss...? (Score:4, Informative)
Would you rather support something that you can see the code and actually fix, or something monolithic and obscure that may or may not have a patch forthcoming? I know which I'd pick....
It is capitalism (Score:3, Interesting)
For example, the store can offer a computer and a choice of two software packages.
package a) commercial software with Norton and Microsoft works or Office and so on.
package b) the free software alternative but the store can tack on $50 on the computer price.
Well, you say, they can't charge for free software. While that is true, they can "fiddle" with the numbers. They can raise the base computer price $25, and offer a $25 rebate if you buy the commercial software package.
They can also sell a 1 year support contract for package b for $50 (and then they buy the service from Geeks on wheels or something for $25).
There, they make $50 ($25 + $50 - $25) for selling a system with free software. And the customer saved even more.
Win-win.
What is good is that the store builds a relationship with geeks on wheels and that can also be translated into money. For instance, whenever Geeks on wheels services that computer they would buy the part or software from the store.
The remaining problem is that the computer shop buys their computers from HP (for instance) and they may refuse to sell a system without at least MS Works on it because of some contract that they in turn have with Microsoft.
Re:It is capitalism (Score:2)
Sure, they can. Any price they want. No one generally tries selling open source software because who would buy what you can download for free. Then again people are stupid so maybe there is a lot of money to be made selling oss software to the unsuspecting.
Re:It is capitalism (Score:2)
They aren't throwing away their money, they are spending money to make more of their personal time free.
There are companies that have no other product than "free" software.
Re:It is capitalism (Score:2)
That's not quite true. You can charge money for free software, unless the license explicitly prohibits it. The GPL for instance doesn't prohibit you from selling software, but it doesn't prohibit the customer of copying and redistributing the software either.
Where I live, 3 out of 4 computer shops have gone out of business because of th
But (Score:2)
Its like going to a Baptist church and asking if you can give out some literature pushing Buddhism.
The only way I can see a store letting you do anything like that is if they already sell machines with Linux inst
Knoppix and Best Buy (Score:3, Funny)
Marketing (Score:3, Funny)
Looks like you are doing some good marketing on the behalf of Best Buy
It can work (Score:3, Interesting)
chains or sole proprietor? (Score:2, Informative)
Support Markup (Score:3, Insightful)
Door slaming time! (Score:2)
That's what all those religious crispies try to tell me as I'm trying to tell them to get off my porch and never come back.
But...
Seems to me there was some CD project out there that bundled a lot of general use Open Source. The problem as I see it is that the vast majority of OSS is really of no interest at all to the "average" users. Sys admins and geeks, perhaps, but not "average" users.
Maybe the first step wou
It's not in their interest to sell open source (Score:2)
As for spyware et al, ignorance makes companies money. 50% of Symantec's revenue is from their Norton Antivirus product.
But if you read my posting on this Slashdot thread from yesterday:
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/27/17 3 3245&tid=114&tid=113&tid=154&tid=95&tid=218 [slashdot.org]
Namely the use
Better idea... (Score:2)
1) Burn 10 copies of Knoppix or whatever your favorite LiveCD is, have a decent looking label printed for it (and applied), print the various readme's in the various languages, create a cover/index page for it, put it all in a 3 ring (or similar) binder
2) Burn 10 copies of the full install CDs for the distro(s) of your choice. Again, print the readme's, install docs, etc., label everything nicely, and put it in a binder of some sort
3) Burn 10 copies
uh, they SELL software (Score:2)
One possible avenue would be for him to sell something like firefox with norton suite as a security package, and make the limitations of firefox explicit to the customer. Charging a premium will buffer him from having customers think poorly of him when they realize that they can't see the dancing hamster, use their online
nobody mentionned oooff yet (Score:2)
Wrong approach (Score:2)
Guerilla Tactics, AOL-style. (Score:2, Interesting)
uh oh (Score:3, Funny)
Are you THAT GUY who shows up at the local computer shops to annoy the customers and employees but never buys anything?
Re:Computer users (Score:2, Troll)
LK
Re:Computer users (Score:2)
This is true about so much more than computers. People treat their cars, their careers, their marriages, and even their own bodies this way. Maintenance isn't part of the culture here in the US, and I'd assume it's bad elsewhere, too. Laziness has become a way of life for so many.
It's pathetic that people won't even try to lose weight, eat better, exercise, get organized, or talk to their spouse until something's already broken. And even then, they want someone else (a doctor, an assistant or coworker,
Support? (Score:2)
After a set of email exchanges, you might get a live chat, with a "tech support" person that has access to the same things you will find searching Microsoft's site. If you opt to pay some rather large dollars for phone support, you get the same tech who doesn't know anymore than the bulletins posted on Microsoft's web site.
Support? It's Microsoft's "support" (lack there of) that DROVE ME TO LINUX.
Now I run Linux, I don't have weird driver issues that make you ha
Re:Fundamental problem with open source (Score:2)