Pay for Arch?

iBertus · 2007-03-05 12:13:21

Dusty wrote:

Slightly on topic: I'd be curious to know how many people would be willing to donate if they knew their money was going directly to developer salary? i.e.: If you like a particular dev's work and want him to spend more time on it, you can donate to him. He may or may not spend more time on it, but its incentive. ;-) This is an interesting question, because it goes beyond supporting costs coming out of developer pockets and into actually filling those pockets.
Dusty

I would support a fund to provide devs with various hardware. For example, I would support a fund to provide the devs with Athlon64 CPUs so that more troubleshooting could be done on that platform. The same would go for various video cards, sound cards, etc.

Moo-Crumpus · 2007-03-05 12:54:20

If you wanna pay, donate.
http://www.archlinux.org/donate/

ralvez · 2007-03-05 15:25:22

I would not have any problems paying for Arch or donating to the distro (I mean donate $$ as opposed to time which most of us do anyway when helping via these forums).
Donating to specific developers (as suggested by Dusty) I'm not sure ... it may have a backlash effect, in so far that it could make some developers feel like their work is not "that much" appreciated as someone else work.
I do not feel as comfortable buying things that "barely" contributes to Arch, in my view it is more of a benefit to the people selling the items in the store than it is to Arch ... but that's just me.

R

normc · 2007-03-06 02:05:16

I've dropped some money in the donations box a couple of times, more than $10

Snarkout · 2007-03-07 04:36:39

I'd suggest the amazon (or wherever - thethingsiwant.com is kind of interesting too) wish lists - I always feel a little better getting a CD or book for someone than I do donating money. I mean, I know what it's like to get money as a gift now that I'm married with kids - it just goes into the bank account and buys diapers or something, while that DVD I really wanted is fun to get. I imagine the difference between "donations" an a wishlist would be about the same.

Bison · 2007-03-09 12:59:01

I wouldn't personally pay for it, unless it came with a shirt. Not that Arch isn't great, but I try not to pay for software. However, I kind of wish there was a boxed, commercial derivitive of Arch. That way I could reasonably try to push my boss to switch.

McQueen · 2007-03-09 15:00:18

Bison wrote:

I wouldn't personally pay for it, unless it came with a shirt.

Heh, I think I'd say that about most things.

yak8998 · 2007-03-13 08:32:47

Dusty wrote:

Slightly on topic: I'd be curious to know how many people would be willing to donate if they knew their money was going directly to developer salary? i.e.: If you like a particular dev's work and want him to spend more time on it, you can donate to him. He may or may not spend more time on it, but its incentive. ;-) This is an interesting question, because it goes beyond supporting costs coming out of developer pockets and into actually filling those pockets.
Dusty

I think this is a really good idea. I can't recall off the top of my head (I think its Haiku), but I love the developer bountys idea. If two people want to work on it, tell them collaborate and split the bounty. I don't know what needs work on arch right now (not much time for nix anymore, I'm a sys admin in a 100% windows hospital now ) but I remember in the past there were a few things I would've paid to have worked on.

forestranger · 2007-03-13 08:44:44

I wouldn't buy a boxed copy of Arch because of the retail argument. I like the current system of download and donate. I'm also tempted to buy some shwag... but i'd first like to know what percent of the price goes into making the merchandise and what percent goes into Arch's war chest.

By the way, is there a minimum amount to donate to get your name plastered on the wall of fame? And how much time before it gets up there?

3nd3r · 2007-03-13 08:48:00

Well, to be totally honest, For the great package management system, the very friendly folks (unlike the gentoo fucks) I would GLADLY pay for arch. Just to have the service that I am currently getting for free. I would buy a CD, and or DVD, shirt etc.. I am so happy with this distro and have personally moved about 300 people to arch. Now that I know that there is a cafe press store, I will be pimping arch-wear everywhere I go

mrjwalsh · 2007-03-14 01:30:36

Got me a shirt, my idea of small and cafepresses idea of small are two very different things, but even though its a bit big it still rocks socks.

Snarkout · 2007-03-14 02:13:43

mrjwalsh wrote:

Got me a shirt, my idea of small and cafepresses idea of small are two very different things, but even though its a bit big it still rocks socks.

I greatly appreciate the bigness of the xxl Arch sweatshirt I have. It kept me in my garage hitting the weights all winter and even braved some snowy sled dragging and farmers walks. Most of the sweatshirts I've ammased over the years are too short someplace or too tight someplace. My only complaint would be that it's a very light gray and has baby food, coffee, and blood stains all over it at this point. It does soak up beer admirably, though.

McQueen · 2007-03-14 05:51:35

Snarkout wrote:

It does soak up beer admirably, though.

Okay, that sold me.

Flying Saxman · 2007-03-27 11:23:53

It would depend on what the box contains and my (then) current situation:
Actually I would not need a manual, ArchLinux is very well documented through its wikis and its boards(I get problems faster and easier solved than under my SuSE 9.3). The problem with printed manuals in combination with bleeding-edge distributions - like ArchLinux is - that the manuals are very soon outdated and cannot help you anymore. That is the reason, why I have two ArchLinux-installations on my pc: One for working and one (slim) for making backups and looking for help, if my working-Linux does not boot anymore (kernel-panic), so I can fix it and look for the (actual) solution in the internet.

What I would buy would be an ArchLinux-box with little "gimmick" like a computer-/laptop-sticker or something like this, but only, if the box is not to expensive.
What I also would buy, would be an ArchBSD-box, if it would be a stable, non-bleeding-edge-distribution. In this case the manual would stay actual for a longer time. But I remember, that Judd would not want ArchLinux to be a "pay-for-distribution".

rhomp2002 · 2009-06-23 21:39:58

My problem with donating is that I do not use PayPal at all - ever. If there were some way to donate without going through PayPal I would do so but not the way it is set up now. Had problems with PayPal in the past.

What proportion of the CafePress charges comes back to Arch? I would do that if the amount to Arch were significant enough but if it is only 2%, not worth the bother. I have been thinking of buying Arch from On-Disk. He donates back to the distro-developers a pretty good amount when you buy from him. I already have the downloaded version but if the amount going back to Arch were big enough I would do that. At least it would help.

will1911a1 · 2009-06-23 21:59:52

rhomp2002 wrote:

My problem with donating is that I do not use PayPal at all - ever. If there were some way to donate without going through PayPal I would do so but not the way it is set up now. Had problems with PayPal in the past.

Ditto this. If buying the cafepress stuff helps I'd rather do that.

AngryKoala · 2009-06-23 22:57:30

I get Windows for free (legitimately) so if I had to pay for linux...lol

Trent · 2009-06-24 00:13:30

I wouldn't buy Arch if buying it was the only way to get it, but I might buy it if it was boxed and sold as well as available via download (a la Slackware). Then on the other hand, buying a boxed CD set of Arch would be rather self-defeating: one of Arch's great strengths is the rolling-release model, and a CD set would likely be obsolete the afternoon after the official release.

Ranguvar · 2009-06-24 00:15:16

I'd pay if there was a fancy box with a fancy CD, T-shirt, branded USB stick with an Arch installer on it, etc. It'd be a nice way to support development. And yeah, I know you get get most of that stuff from Schwag, I will once I actually have some cash

To Dusty, yeah. Once I get a steady source of income, I see myself trying to donate a good bit to hopefully help out Free Software devs -- I take the view that since a lot of this stuff is far better than the commerical alternative *cough*Winblows*cough* I might as well pay what I believe is fair price for it, and I'm supporting the continued Free Software effort

If they can sell Windoze for a couple hundred bucks, I think users should be willing to shell out $50 or something if they are able to

fukawi2 · 2009-06-24 00:43:05

Necro thread.... But depending on the price, I might pay for a pretty CD...

Would look better than a crappy burnt CD to show people when they ask "wtf is that? how did you make Windows look like that?"

Last edited by fukawi2 (2009-06-24 00:43:43)

Meyithi · 2009-06-24 00:56:08

Some sort of annual membership would suit Arch better IMO. Maybe offer a "Subscriber" forum group with a few subscriber only forums, newsletter and perks such as colored user names in the same way that Neowin handles it. Nobody is left out but you can show your support and gain a few perks and maybe a lil' bit of kudos as well.

Themaister · 2009-06-24 07:06:45

I'd rather donate money and buy schwag once in a while

zenlord · 2009-06-24 09:18:32

It's kinda weird, paying for software since that was my main reason to switch to linux. On the other hand, since making the switch I have saved some money (partly due to not having to buy licenses), so I'm really considering a donation to both Arch (personal use) and Debian (office use).

Dusty wrote:

Slightly on topic: I'd be curious to know how many people would be willing to donate if they knew their money was going directly to developer salary?

I'm not really sure, but that could make it hard for new devs to get as much 'appreciation' as older devs, and probably some devs will be better at getting 'appreciated' than others, without any direct relation to the amount of work that they put in Arch.

Another suggestion: why not use a bounty-system in the bugtracker? 'Annoyed that the bug that you filed is not considered important enough? Put a bounty on it.' That way, I guess, an incentive is created to solve bugs that possibly only YOU have encountered... AND every dev has the same incentive to try and solve that bug which has a $100 bounty on it (and not only the maintainer of that package).

Maybe someone could get paid to get the ati-driver back in a supported part of Archlinux, and people whose systems work perfectly can still put a bounty on a bug of their choice - that way, they pay for a specific something instead of donating to a bank account.

This idea is loosely founded on what I read in a blog of Wouter Verhelst, Debian dev and freelance maintainer of our office-network. He is a freelancer and considers his salary as an incentive from his clients to put their work on top of his list. FOSS is free, support services are not.

Zl.

/EDIT: just realised the bugtracker is also used for feature requests. So this could work out quite well I think - Devs could tell someone who whines about 'the next brilliant idea for Arch' to either provide a patch or pay up.

Last edited by zenlord (2009-06-24 09:38:46)

rhomp2002 · 2009-06-25 01:46:58

Whether the manual is out of date or not, it would still be useful because the basics don't really change all that much. If you know how it was done you can probably figure out how it works now with a bit more ease. If you look at the manual as a logic pattern then it would make more sense whether you have a rolling release methodology or not.

Allan · 2009-06-25 01:48:34

zenlord wrote:

Devs could tell someone who whines about 'the next brilliant idea for Arch' to either provide a patch or pay up.

we already do half of that...

Arch Linux

#26 2007-03-05 12:13:21

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