--- In IBDI@y..., "Leyne, Sean" <sleyne@a...> wrote:

> Marco,
>
> If you contact Paul Beach (pbeach@i...) he'll be more than
> happy to take your money and ship you a CD (he's located in the UK)

Oh, thanks, maybe there should be a little more information for that in the site, I think European FB users are many :)

>
>
> > What about a special, low price ($20?) labeled CD that I
> > could buy just to give an added value to my customers, and
> > make them feel that they are "legal, registered software"?
> > Open source is not very understood by my clients.
>
> There is some discussion taking place on that very subject -- a lower
> cost CD. Although I must admit that the price being discussed is more
> in the region of $40-50 USD.
>
> The question is really how many people would be interested in this CD,
> since the downloads are so conveniently available.

I think that the interest should be in:
a) supporting FB. If it's 20$ for each of my customer, it's not a problem, even for small, cheap (around 300$?) software I could sell
b) having something more to give to the customer. He is used (or he should be used ;)): one regular software-one CD. So one database engine-one CD
c) producing CD is very cheap (I think <1$), so with limited delivery costs it should be a good revenue (I could buy a pack of 10CD, so only one delivery, and 10 happy customer). The problem could be FB update... I can not give FB1 CD when I installed FB 1.1 or.. 2.0!

What about forget the CD and do something like Mandrake Linux does? A "support subscription", maybe at 2-3 levels, and with the first level very affordable? And with special price for users from "poor" countries? (like Africa, Est Europe, etc.). You can't effort a 100$ subscription when you have a 100$ annual salay
Just some thoughts
Thanks
Marco Menardi