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From: richter@nic.cerf.net (Adam J. Richter)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd,alt.cd-rom
Subject: 4.4BSD-alpha CDROM
Keywords: cdrom
Message-ID: <2278@nic.cerf.net>
Date: 9 Jul 92 10:18:07 GMT
Article-I.D.: nic.2278
Followup-To: comp.unix.bsd
Organization: Yggdrasil Computing Infrastructure Corporation
Lines: 40


	CSRG is supposed to release the 4.4-alpha tape in the next
week or so.  To raise money, CSRG is going to charge $1,000 for a
tape, and they've asked a number of major FTP sites not to make the
tape available for a while so that companies will actually buy it.

	On one hand, there seems to be a consensus on this group
that additional funding for CSRG would be money well spent.  On the
other hand, I suspect that there are a lot people who would like
to get the 4.4-alpha distribution, but who cannot justify spending
a thousand dollars for the tape.

	Fortunately, I have a plan.

	My company, Yggdrasil Computing Infrastructure Corp., will
sell a 4.4-alpha CDROM and give CSRG 60% of the sales revenue from
this CDROM until November 1st.  At $100 each, this CDROM will allow
people to contribute to CSRG while, at the same time, getting
something tangible in return.  Maybe I'll thrown in a T-shirt with
deal if I can think of a snappy slogan for it.  In order to avoid
undercutting CSRG, company sites with more than twenty employees
will be required to buy a minimum of 15 CD's.  Hopefully this
should help fund CSRG while reducing the annoyance of not having
4.4-alpha available for FTP.

	At the moment, I plan to make the CDROM simply contain
the compressed tar file of the distribution and a README file.
If there is enough interest I could make an unpacked directory
tree that was compliant with ISO9660 level 2 for non-DOS
machines, but I'd still have to change some of the file names to
make them legal for ISO9660.

	If you have any suggestions or comments about the plan that
I've outlined, send me email.

-- 
Adam J. Richter				409 Evelyn Avenue, Apt. 312
richter@cerf.net			Albany, CA 94706
					(510)528-3209
Another member of the League for Programming Freedom (league@prep.ai.mit.edu).