[SciPy-dev] OpenCD

[Joe Cooper]

John Hunter wrote:
>>>>>>"Joe" == Joe Cooper <joe at enthought.com> writes:
> 
> 
>     Joe> Maybe with the next release coming in the next week or so, we
>     Joe> should just focus on getting out the word to the folks who
>     Joe> would have a real interest in it who may not be familiar with
>     Joe> it, and making sure they are able to get it easily.
> 
> What might be nice would be for enthought to press a CD release for
> it, and charge a nominal fee ($10-15?) to recover some of the cost you
> put into the thing.  I've converted a former adviser to using python
> plus the standard goodies in a course he is teaching in place of
> matlab.  95% of his students are win32.  I suggested enthon to him but
> he was put off by the download size, so there might be a small market
> for a CD.
> 
> Granted, any semi-literate person could simply download and burn it
> themselves, but we shouldn't overestimate literacy in the wild.  For
> people like my adviser, he would probably rather order 15 copies for
> his next course rather than figure out how to download it and burn it.
> But I suspect he is an exception case: I sometimes refer to him as the
> only Luddite I know with a cluster of Sun workstations.

Hmmm..."any semi-literate person"...Is that your way of volunteering?  ;-)

Eric and I have discussed this very idea and I believe there is a small 
but critical non-technical problem with the concept:

As soon as money changes hands, no matter how cheap we sell those CDs or 
how largely a "No Warranty and No Support" statement is printed on the 
label, folks who buy it will start calling us and emailing us directly, 
asking questions and expecting answers.  And if something doesn't work 
right someone will want it fixed, NOW!  It sounds ridiculous to most 
folks (me too), but I've been involved in Open Source software on a lot 
of fronts and I /know/ it would happen.  In fact, the most demanding 
users are nearly always the ones who've given the least to a project, in 
terms of effort or money.  Not that I'm bitter or anything.  ;-)

Anyway, this is not the official Enthought party line, by any means, but 
I don't think selling unsupported Enthon CDs will happen.  I do think it 
is likely that CD giveaways at conferences might occur, and I think it 
has been done before, though I wasn't there to witness it.  And I don't 
think anyone would hunt you down or threaten you with violence if you 
wanted to burn CDs and distribute them in whatever way you like to 
whomever you like.