Missed evangelism opportunities was Re: Not Happy with ShipIt

Al Gordon runlevel7 at gmail.com
Wed Aug 3 14:35:44 UTC 2005


On 8/3/05, Frank Hale <frankhale1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I disagree. We are talking about a very nice free gift with no
> obligation on your part other than to fill in your address and how
> many cd's you want. To demand prompt service is a slap in the face. If
> they put in place a method to purchase the cd's then I'd almost
> certainly expect some type of prompt service. I don't think we can
> demand prompt service from a totally free method of receiving Ubuntu
> cd's. It just makes no valid sense. We should be happy that we can
> receive as many *free* cd's as we like, whether that takes 2 or 3
> months to receive is beside the point, It's totally free of charge!

Frank, I understand where you're coming from, and agree that we should
not complain about free services.  However, I'm not sure that everyone
considers these CDs as gifts.

>From the ShipIt website:
If you have organized an event and have an urgent need for Ubuntu CDs,
please read the FAQ and contact us.

That, to me, sounds more like Ubuntu supporting people who want to
support Ubuntu, more so than people who are willing to take Canonical
up on their free offer.  As several people have said, they'd love to
pay for this "gift", if it meant that they had at least the slightest
expectation of when they'd receive it.

Part of my disappointment with ShipIt was that I did have an urgent
need for CDs, and did not get a timely response from the mechanism
that was put in place to support that need.  Such is life, and the
growing pains of a new company and new distro, I suppose.

I don't think that anyone is trying to slap anyone in the face here. 
We're trying to improve upon a process.  No one considers it a slap in
the face when bug reports come in on the Free software that
Canonical/Ubuntu provides.  Why should this be any different?

-- 

  -- AL --




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