[Fedora-India] Queries regarding the Free media project in India

[Ankur Sinha]

On Wed, 2009-07-08 at 11:15 +0530, sankarshan wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 10:41 AM, Ankur Sinha<sanjay.ankur at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > This is because everyone that requests a media does not turn into a
> > local contact. The media is not following the "receiver becomes donor"
> > scheme that we want it to.
> 
> We never did visualize the "receiver becomes donor" way of paying it
> forward. The idea was to de-lineate the LocalContacts from the "free"
> FreeMedia aspect. Which in plain terms means that the LCs should be
> able to project that they are charging for the media.

I don't understand the last sentence. "project that they are charging
for the media" meaning?

> 
> > Local contacts are usually students who have a fixed pocket money. You
> > can do the math :)
> 
> So, do I take it that the students will not want to set up a system
> whereby they can charge for media and, keep a margin for themselves ?
> That's a paradox really. I would have thought that given the volume of
> demand and scarcity of supply, it should have been a reasonably nice
> opportunity.
> 
> > As Rangeen mentions in his reply, UGs are merely students. Again , same
> > equation. Another variable that messes this up is that Fedora isn't the
> > only distribution around. Since they are Linux UGs and not Fedora UGs,
> > getting people to distribute fedora dvds is difficult. They all support
> > their different distributions and fundamentally want the same thing we
> > do, for them. There's a hefty discussion as to which distro we are going
> > to use in the install fest. Its not always Fedora.
> 
> Let me rephrase the question (assuming that neither Rangeen nor you
> did get the drift) - can UGs actually be ready to set up a system
> whereby they charge for media when requested and, keep the margin in
> the UG account ? For example, http://plug.org.in/software.php - is
> this model difficult to replicate across other UGs and, especially
> institute UGs ?
> 

I do get the drift. I understand what you're saying. Here's a
clarification:

Any decision taken by the LUG has to be consented upon by the majority.
The majority here has a stand that says "we will not charge for
ANYTHING". Its a different matter altogether that the majority is not
involved in activities that require finance (ie mailing media etc.).
What you're saying (the example of PLUG etc.) has already been discussed
since the little extra that we collect can be used for any events etc.
that we plan. However, i haven't gotten a positive response (yet).

> > A query: Are all the local contacts members of the free media list,
> > rather, do they all check to see if there are requests that they can
> > service or is this done by somebody (who assigns such media requests to
> > local contacts)??
> 
> I don't have the answer to that off-hand, but I can check around.
> 

okay, thanks.

-- 
regards,

Ankur