Re: On a free repacker

[Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com>]

flx, please create the donations acceptance wording for our website.

Hans

On Wednesday 19 May 2004 12:28, Markus Törnqvist wrote:
> Hi
>
> There was an IRC discussion earlier today, a short one, about the repacker.
>
> It appears that Reiser4 does not fragment much in normal use, but it can
> get badly fragmented with fsstress for example?
>
> Now, the idea is to sell the repacker.
>
> Basically:
>
> 1) It could be binary-only
>    Enough buyers will open the source like with Blender
>    There would be online statistics which describe how much to go
>    before this happens.
>
> 2) You could sell the sources and the rights to do whatever you want,
>    except redistribute it.
Yes, I think this.
>
> There was the point that Blender had gained some popularity before
> the source release, which Reiser4 does not yet have. That may make
> this difficult to push through. A free repacker would make the situation
> better, but I see it as one of those annoying chicken-and-egg problems.
>
> The pricing must be ok too. Not so high that regular people won't buy it
> but not so cheap that it doesn't generate revenue.
I think 5% of the cost of the storage hardware (including raid cards), which 
is about $5 for most people.
>
> If the source code is sold, people may want to develop it further, but
> I'm sure if they pay 1000000000e for it, they will expect perfection
> and not contribute.
>
> Then there's some copy-protection issues. I hope it will not be too
> heavily laid with license keys and stuff like that, because it makes
> usage harder and doesn't stop anyone from being an asshole.
No copy protection.  We will make money from large corporations and not worry 
about individual pirates.
>
> I understood that a binary-only model would be in the form of a kernel
> module? It may be the easiest method.
only user space portion will be non-gpl.
>
> Hans, what's your take on this?
> Maybe a real donations page would be required to get the baby up and
> running, maybe some really basic repacker but one that's so rock-solid
> that people would buy it and know they'll get free updates and in
> the end it'll be all open...
>
> Just my two cents worth of rambling again :)
thanks for your thoughts.