On 15 Oct 2001, Timothy R.Butler wrote:
Yeah, that would be great for updates... What I mainly meant is putting ISO's on it, so that I could install 7.3 immediately after purchasing it, rather than waiting for my boxed set to arrive. However, SuSE would make a great value-add if they offered a "SuSE Network" service.
I think you've really got something Timothy. "Free Upgrade To Next Version" looks nice on a box (Debian boxed sets have "Free Updates For Life" in big letters). Offering something like this would not cost SuSE much money, and it would increase their profile. As we all know, most money in the open source world (notice... no capitals) is in services, and this would be a first step.
Say, a good idea might be to offer such a service for something like $10-$12 a month (two or three months free with Boxed set purchase), and for that cost you could download the ISO's for the current release for as long as you subscribed (no support though). It wouldn't earn SuSE as much as a boxed set at every release, but it would probably come close to the same, would allow you to get it faster, and would guarantee SuSE monthly revenue from subscribers.
As many of you probably have heard, Mandrake users asked for Mandrake Corp. to set up a PayPal account for donations specifically because many users felt they were ripping off the company because they simply downloaded the ISO's. IMO, a private / public company's reputation drops when they allow donations, so offering semi-cheap priority FTP access would draw many customers with fast Internet access and, as you said, would guarantee SuSE some revenue. -- noodlez: Karol Pietrzak PGP KeyID: 0x3A1446A0