To register as Vendor

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Sindhu
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To register as Vendor

Post by Sindhu »

Hello,

Zyxware technologies Pvt Ltd.(http://www.zyxware.com) is a Free Software company which has been actively contributing to Free Software and offering commercial services around Free Software for individuals, enterprises and government organizations across India. To create and promote an awareness about Free Software and related freedoms in society, we have also organized Free Software campaigns like Freedom Walk across our home state of Kerala, Freedom Toaster, a kiosk to get a burned DVD of desired distribution of GNU / Linux, etc..

One of our offerings to FOSS community in India is a 'Request CD' program through which we send across CDs and DVDs of GNU / Linux distributions (and other FOSS software) to people across India on demand at a nominal charge. This service is especially useful for users who hail from remote locations in India and do not have access to high speed internet service and for those who have to pay a large amount of money for the data downloads when they have internet access.

We have added your distribution to our online shop www.zyxware.com/shop. The link is http://www.zyxware.com/requestcd?&distr ... me=ReactOS
It would be great if we could formalize our relationship by registering as a vendor on your website so that FOSS users from across India can procure the CDs/DVDs through our program. We hope for a positive response and look forward to a successful association with your esteemed organisation.

Thanking you,

Sindhu Jayakumar

Web: http://www.zyxware.com/
Email: requestcd@zyxware.com
Mob: +91-9446-06-9446
Ph: +91-471-4063818
Webunny
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Re: To register as Vendor

Post by Webunny »

Well...that didn't take long, after this: http://www.reactos.org/forum/viewtopic. ... 15#p113079

I guess ROS will have to make its stand on it a bit more clear, now. (Or ignore it altogether).
Z98
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Re: To register as Vendor

Post by Z98 »

Official position of the project

As ReactOS is still in an alpha stage, the rate of changes to the code base means any build becomes effectively obsolete within the next commit. Because of this the project does not intend to pursue any relationships to distribute images on a wide scale in the near term. While third party vendors are free to distribute CDs on their own and are permitted to do so by the GPL, the project requests that a disclaimer is placed to indicate the lack of any official association between the vendor and the ReactOS Project.
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jonaspm
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Re: To register as Vendor

Post by jonaspm »

I though you were going to take advantage of this
Webunny
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Re: To register as Vendor

Post by Webunny »

jonaspm wrote:I though you were going to take advantage of this
Rationally one would expect that, yes. But I'm not surprised by the Reaction (pun half intended). I'm not sure WHAT they're thinking, except it seems an overly defensive stance. I could see asking to explicitly mention it is alpha, ok. One has to be careful people do not think it's a finished product.

But who the fuck cares whether 'the rate of changes to the code base means any build becomes effectively obsolete within the next commit'? What's that to a third party vendor that wants to sell it? And to a buyer who wants to buy it? That argument would be true whether or not we affiliate with them. I mean; they're selling it now, right? And it still becomes 'obsolete with every build'. So what changed?
I'm not seeing the relevance of it, in the context of affiliating or not. The argument is, on itself, worthless in that regard, especially since I doubt it's builds that they sell, but rather releases. Think about it. Even when we would be at 0.5 or even 1.0, new builds STILL would come out on a regular basis (we're targeting a moving target, after all), so it would STILL 'always become obsolete'. Following that reasoning, we can never sell or affiliate with a third party, since there are always going to be code changes. And that's true for any open source project who uses an svn system. One would thus have to conclude they can not ever sell any CD's...

That argument is, on itself, nonsensical, thus.

I think the only remaining is the one which is implied and I already alluded on: the fear that our product would be deemed to be finished and instead turns out to be inferior and the bad impression would rub of on ROS. But to counter that, it would make much more sense to affiliate with a third party, so one has more control as well as some financial benefits, and actually demand they clearly mention to indicate it's alpha (instead of now having no control, no financial benefit, and only asking to mention they are not affiliated).

And that's even without asking oneself if that demand is even enforceable. If Anaes was right here viewtopic.php?f=2&t=13755&start=15#p113074 I'm not even sure that you can oblige a third party to specifically mention you're not affiliated, just like when you re-sell a Mercedes, Mercedes can't demand you explicitly say you're not affiliated with them. It's rather the reverse: you can't say you're affiliated when you're not. But if you keep quiet and just include the logo for informational purposes, I don't think one can do squat about it.

So really; I don't understand what one wants to achieve here. From a pragmatic stance, this whole kind of reasoning is pretty incomprehensible and counterproductive.

But hey...worse shit has happened, and if I point these things out any further, I'm only getting to be called 'pushy' again. It's used as the default counter-argument these days.
middings
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Re: To register as Vendor

Post by middings »

I am not a lawyer. I'm going to assume Z98 knows what he's doing here. Perhaps making the effort to ask that other parties who display a ReactOS trademark disclaim affiliation with the ReactOS project is necessary in order to protect ReactOS's claims to its trademarks. That's my guess.
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EmuandCo
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Re: To register as Vendor

Post by EmuandCo »

It's simple. We warn everywhere @ our site about the current status and it is still in alpha stage, meaning it is not feature-complete and is recommended only for evaluation and testing purposes. And using a release which is two months old, already is a problem in updating matters. As long as this is written on the disk, sure, do as you want. We can't stop it anyway ^^. We just want to be 100% sure that noone decides to install it on a productive system and then it's over with the most recent important data
ReactOS is still in alpha stage, meaning it is not feature-complete and is recommended only for evaluation and testing purposes.

If my post/reply offends or insults you, be sure that you know what sarcasm is...
Webunny
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Re: To register as Vendor

Post by Webunny »

EmuandCo wrote:It's simple. We warn everywhere @ our site about the current status and it is still in alpha stage, meaning it is not feature-complete and is recommended only for evaluation and testing purposes. And using a release which is two months old, already is a problem in updating matters. As long as this is written on the disk, sure, do as you want. We can't stop it anyway ^^. We just want to be 100% sure that noone decides to install it on a productive system and then it's over with the most recent important data
Granted, as I already said myself; that is a valid concern. But as I also already stated, in that case one would do better to affiliate and to ask to explicitly mention it's alpha and not ready for everyday use. That way, one is sure the people buying and using it are warned. If one is only asking to mention one is not affiliated, they can still NOT include any warnings about it being alpha. As a result, even if one isn't legally responsible, you will still have customers having a bad impression, and that bad impression will invariably rub off on ROS itself. Maybe unwarranted, granted, but that is how things work: if people see a CD with ROS on it, having a ROS logo, they WILL make a link between the two, whether there is a mention of 'not affiliated' or not.

My point is, thus: why not be a bit more pro-active in a positive way, contact that firm, and see what is possible? The result of such a communication could be beneficial to both.
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Black_Fox
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Re: To register as Vendor

Post by Black_Fox »

I'm not sure if anyone bothered to actually checkout the link. They offer version 0.3.3 and say "ReactOS 0.3.3 i386 CD is the latest version of ReactOS."
Z98
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Re: To register as Vendor

Post by Z98 »

The majority of the developers and project members have a strong ethical objection to the notion of selling an unfinished product that is not even usable yet, especially one that is ultimately intended to be given away for free. From our viewpoint it is highly unprofessional and even disrespectful to potential consumers of the end-product, especially consider that ReactOS, in its current state, is not functional for day to day usage and with no actual upgrade path there is no future-proofing of any sort. This is especially true for point releases, considering that they are already out of date by the time they get formally released and developers for the most part ignore them after release. This is also why we tell people to use CD-RWs when they want to test ReactOS on real hardware, because we internally place little to no value to burns of individual revisions or point releases. When we ourselves do not place much if any value on something, we consider it unethical to attempt to persuade others that there is a value in it. While we cannot stop others from trying to hawk software that is not yet ready for general consumption, we will not be a willing party to such conduct. If and when we do decide to sell a printed image, we would be doing so only because either A) we have an upgrade path for users or B) the image is intended to celebrate some particular milestone. Until either of those two events however, the project will not attempt to sell something that its own members do not consider to be of great utility or value.
Webunny
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Re: To register as Vendor

Post by Webunny »

Z98 wrote:The majority of the developers and project members have a strong ethical objection to the notion of selling an unfinished product that is not even usable yet, especially one that is ultimately intended to be given away for free. From our viewpoint it is highly unprofessional and even disrespectful to potential consumers of the end-product, especially consider that ReactOS, in its current state, is not functional for day to day usage and with no actual upgrade path there is no future-proofing of any sort. This is especially true for point releases, considering that they are already out of date by the time they get formally released and developers for the most part ignore them after release. This is also why we tell people to use CD-RWs when they want to test ReactOS on real hardware, because we internally place little to no value to burns of individual revisions or point releases. When we ourselves do not place much if any value on something, we consider it unethical to attempt to persuade others that there is a value in it. While we cannot stop others from trying to hawk software that is not yet ready for general consumption, we will not be a willing party to such conduct. If and when we do decide to sell a printed image, we would be doing so only because either A) we have an upgrade path for users or B) the image is intended to celebrate some particular milestone. Until either of those two events however, the project will not attempt to sell something that its own members do not consider to be of great utility or value.
That standpoint is clear, however, as I said two times by now, if you want to make sure that consumers know what they are getting into, it would be more logical to ask that they put a warning (this is an alpha release and not meant for every day use) in there, then to ask that they put 'we're not affiliated with ROS' in there. What you describe as treating customers with little respect is exactly due to creating an unwarranted expectation.

However, if the customer is well aware it's alpha and not to be used for everyday use, and yet he still wants to buy it, it is *we* who disrespect the consumer if we still consider they're in the wrong for wanting to have it, because it's 'not finished'. In any ethical PR/sales doctrine, it is necessary to make a consumer aware and informed, yes, but once you have an informed consumer, you have to respect his wish, whether you personally like it or not. You can not replace a consumer wish with your own, after all, and this is what the sentence "When we ourselves do not place much if any value on something," alludes at; but why would someone else have to place the same value in it as yours? What if he sees more value in it? Is it for us to determine what value somebody else should have about something? Seen that 'value' is subjectively determined, this seems a rather strange notion to behold. Of course, I can agree with the "we consider it unethical to attempt to persuade others that there is a value in it." But by placing a warning there in front, you do not persuade others that it's more value, instead you more truthfully indicate (and thus reduce) the value to it's normal proportions, as to what expect from it.

You raised some doubtful points, where you basically project your value of things on those of consumers. It's akin to saying: we're not going to sell pyrite as gold, and thus as long as we feel it is pyrite, we're not going to sell it. But that's not the issue. If you sell pyrite as pyrite, and people want to buy that pyrite, where's your objection? It's not because you don't see any value in buying pyrite that somebody else can't find it valuable enough to buy. You also raised some good points, but you seem to fail to note that by not acting more pro-actively in a positive way, you actually worsen all the aspects you bring up. I don't see how one is going to ameliorate this point by just leaving things alone, and just asking for a 'no affiliation' remark on it. It seems to me that, if you really care about those consumers and want to respect their right on free choice as well as being as good as possible informed about what they buy, it would be wiser to actually contact that company and see what is possible to ameliorate the situations FOR those consumers that you feel so strongly about.

Now, I know you well enough to know this will make no impression whatsoever and you will not change your mind over it, even if I would lay out the logic spelled out, right there at your feet, and use the most basic tenets of ethical marketing. It makes no sense, but that attitude is also extremely obstinate, I'm well aware. So, ok, fine, miss the xxth chance of trying it differently and maybe enlarge your userbase/finances/exposure. It's not the first time imho, but since it's a recurrent theme, I'm no longer surprised by it. Don't affiliate then. But at least be diplomatic enough to not blow up all the bridges with these folks, and maybe ask if they can explicitly mention a warning about it being alpha. That would do FAR more good then just saying they have to say they're not affiliated (which is doubtful that it's legally enforceable anyhow), if one is really worried about showing respect and being professional to consumers. A professional makes his consumers informed, but does not decide for them. Big difference.
Z98
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Re: To register as Vendor

Post by Z98 »

If a user is determined to buy something, nothing we do will stop them. They are perfectly free to go and pay a member of the community to go burn them a CD and mail it to them. What need is there to involve the project? The fact that we do not want any part of such a transaction is our way of making clear that we do not condone nor do we offer any sort of additional support for the receiver of the good in question. If someone shows up here claiming they bought a ReactOS CD and asks for help, our reaction would be the same as for someone who downloaded and burned their own ISO.

So far two potential reasons for why people might want an image have been raised, the first being memorabilia and the other if someone cannot get images any other way. Memorabilia is actually a valid desire, except that the point releases are not suitable for such a purpose. The point releases that have been made so far have been made not because we hit any great milestone worth commemorating, they got released because there was a large time period since the last release and we hit a period of relative stability in trunk that made the release possible. If you look at the long stretches of time when there were no releases, more often than not those included periods where ReactOS had major breakages or would not even boot reliably. If you want memorabilia, then I would suggest that you wait until we get to the 0.4.0 release, where there will be something specific to celebrate instead of trying to pretend that 0.3.16 or 0.3.17 was worthy of some great recognition when they were little more than markers denoting where the project was. Knowing what a consumer wants does not mean simply giving it to them in the easiest way possible, especially in the case of memorabilia, unless your intention is to devalue its meaning. We either do a good job with it or we don't do it at all. Doing anything less would indicate we don't have any pride in our own work.

For people who cannot otherwise get images, why would you want the images so badly that you would want to pay for them? The images are useless for testing since a point release is out of date before its actual release and depending on the type of problem a user might need to do regression testing over multiple revisions or there might be a fix in a later revision. And if someone does come to the project saying they tested an old revision that they bought, our default response would be we would need results from an up to date revision. Now, seeing as people relying on 'paid' images actively hinders useful testing and reporting of issues, it is in the project's best interest right now to discourage reliance on any such service. If people are in a situation where they cannot acquire images some other way, then their ability to help in testing is limited in the extreme and we would consider the best course of action for them to be to wait until we have a viable upgrade path between versions.

You seem to forget very easily that at this point ReactOS is not a product that can be consumed. It is a system that people test. We make ReactOS available with the goal that it be tested, not that it be used, because we know it is at this point not usable. Even the point releases are geared towards that, they provide opportunities to conduct more extensive testing than the developers might subject them to and the results are either folded into the release or noted for future work. You persist in trying to sell a product that is not ready yet. To say we find that irritating would be a mild understatement.
Webunny
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Re: To register as Vendor

Post by Webunny »

Z98 wrote:If a user is determined to buy something, nothing we do will stop them. They are perfectly free to go and pay a member of the community to go burn them a CD and mail it to them. What need is there to involve the project? The fact that we do not want any part of such a transaction is our way of making clear that we do not condone nor do we offer any sort of additional support for the receiver of the good in question. If someone shows up here claiming they bought a ReactOS CD and asks for help, our reaction would be the same as for someone who downloaded and burned their own ISO.

So far two potential reasons for why people might want an image have been raised, the first being memorabilia and the other if someone cannot get images any other way. Memorabilia is actually a valid desire, except that the point releases are not suitable for such a purpose. The point releases that have been made so far have been made not because we hit any great milestone worth commemorating, they got released because there was a large time period since the last release and we hit a period of relative stability in trunk that made the release possible. If you look at the long stretches of time when there were no releases, more often than not those included periods where ReactOS had major breakages or would not even boot reliably. If you want memorabilia, then I would suggest that you wait until we get to the 0.4.0 release, where there will be something specific to celebrate instead of trying to pretend that 0.3.16 or 0.3.17 was worthy of some great recognition when they were little more than markers denoting where the project was. Knowing what a consumer wants does not mean simply giving it to them in the easiest way possible, especially in the case of memorabilia, unless your intention is to devalue its meaning. We either do a good job with it or we don't do it at all. Doing anything less would indicate we don't have any pride in our own work.

For people who cannot otherwise get images, why would you want the images so badly that you would want to pay for them? The images are useless for testing since a point release is out of date before its actual release and depending on the type of problem a user might need to do regression testing over multiple revisions or there might be a fix in a later revision. And if someone does come to the project saying they tested an old revision that they bought, our default response would be we would need results from an up to date revision. Now, seeing as people relying on 'paid' images actively hinders useful testing and reporting of issues, it is in the project's best interest right now to discourage reliance on any such service. If people are in a situation where they cannot acquire images some other way, then their ability to help in testing is limited in the extreme and we would consider the best course of action for them to be to wait until we have a viable upgrade path between versions.

You seem to forget very easily that at this point ReactOS is not a product that can be consumed. It is a system that people test. We make ReactOS available with the goal that it be tested, not that it be used, because we know it is at this point not usable. Even the point releases are geared towards that, they provide opportunities to conduct more extensive testing than the developers might subject them to and the results are either folded into the release or noted for future work. You persist in trying to sell a product that is not ready yet. To say we find that irritating would be a mild understatement.
I rather persist in establishing relations with companies who already sell it anyway. Some of your concerns are warranted, but they are not alleviated by the current "we don't care as long as they don't say they are affiliated". You make some presumptions why people would want to buy, and I'm not saying you're wrong or right about the possible reasons, but why does it matter why they buy it? Even if it's just because they wanted a spindle full of it as nice-looking paperweights; what does it matter, as long as it's made clear what you can and can't expect from it? Your objections make more sense from the stance of ROS itself distributing/selling the CD's for a specific reason, like a limited edition item or some such. But the main question here is, what is more important: better informing the consumers, or being able to claim the high ground in our opinion there is no reason for people to buy it, and that it's not 'finished' enough. Even if the latter would be deemed to be true by the devs, it doesn't change anything de facto for the consumers.

As I said before: it would be better if you establish friendly ties with that company, and try to persuade them to at least give the warning that it's alpha on there, IF your concern is truly about showing respect for the consumers, as you said in your former post. You can still 'not affiliate' with it, but at least try to communicate with them on matters that are really the most important, as we both seem to agree, namely adequate information for the consumer, so he can make an informed decision. While one does not exclude the other, you achieve that goal more with the inclusion of a clear warning about it's usage, than with a disclaimer it's not 'affiliated'.

I don't know how anyone can deny this point, which I already mentioned 3 times by now in my posts, and which are always ignored. It's logically evident, 'irritating' or not.
PurpleGurl
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Re: To register as Vendor

Post by PurpleGurl »

Black_Fox wrote:I'm not sure if anyone bothered to actually checkout the link. They offer version 0.3.3 and say "ReactOS 0.3.3 i386 CD is the latest version of ReactOS."
i386? OMG! ROS won't even run on a 486.
Webunny
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Re: To register as Vendor

Post by Webunny »

PurpleGurl wrote:
Black_Fox wrote:I'm not sure if anyone bothered to actually checkout the link. They offer version 0.3.3 and say "ReactOS 0.3.3 i386 CD is the latest version of ReactOS."
i386? OMG! ROS won't even run on a 486.
I'm rather puzzled (and curious) about that too. Did they make any changes to it themselves? Have they bundled it with something?

I'm almost seduced in buying one of them after all... :-)
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