Re: BDI install disk for EMC

So far I count 15 people who have expressed interest in purchasing a
"Brain-Dead Install" EMC cd based upon some version of Red Hat, were
it offered. I agree that a version for Red Hat 6.1 would be a lot
more interesting than for 5.2, if the kernel work were feasible.

The BDI would integrate EMC and the real-time kernel into an otherwise
unmodified version of Red Hat. The existing Red Hat install procedure
would be kept to adapt the installation to hardware, especially video.
A BDI that required no installation choices would have to be run on a
PC assembled from a short and specific list of hardware. That would
make it incompatible with your existing PC. Correct me if I'm wrong,
but I don't think that's the tradeoff people want.

I proposed 100 buyers paying $20 for software that was in the public
domain. Here are some thoughts about terms that I hope will spark a
discussion:

However you slice it, I'm looking to make as a minimum my
usual software consulting/development billable rate of
$125/hour. This will go up proportionally to the risk I
accept. If there's only a 1 in 5 chance I can sell enough
product to cover my time, the rate I try to achieve must be
multiplied by 5 just to keep parity.

Are the 15 people willing to pay $134 instead of $20?

If the likely number of purchasers can be grown from 15 to
1,500, the selling price can drop, although less than you
might think because processing 1,500 orders isn't cheap.

I suggested the product be licensed public domain (PD),
because that would be most useful for purchasers. If I get
all the money up front, that's fine. If I'm expected to sell
85 more copies over time, then shipping software PD won't
allow me to do that.

If the software isn't PD, then NIST probably can't reintegrate
the improvements into their version. This fork would be bad
for everyone. If they could, then we're back to the "I can't
sell PD" problem.

PD causes an economic "free rider" problem, too. Do you want
others to get software for free that you just paid $134 to
fund the development of? What if there's six months of
development into a version and the price is a lot higher?

Maybe you want other people to get the software eventually, to
expand the EMC market, but not immediately. A temporary fork
from NIST and PD allowing one generation of redistribution can
be arranged, but we would need to work these terms out.

I particularly like the idea of offering BDI at $134 to 15
people now, and if more buyers show up their purchase price
will be refunded to the earlier buyers. This can be
implemented at reasonable transaction costs on e-gold.com.

It may be that nobody is interested in paying commercial rates
for EMC work, or at least not when the market is so small. If
so, that's fine, just let me know.


A member of the League for Programming Freedom (LPF) http://lpf.ai.mit.edu
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Brian Bartholomew - bb@... - www.wv.com - Working Version, Cambridge, MA