Re: [Bug-gnubg] Promoting gnubg

[Jim Segrave]

On Wed 12 Nov 2003 (11:14 +0100), Achim Mueller wrote:
> * Christopher D. Yep wrote on 11 Nov 2003:
> 
> > There are probably a substantial number of backgammon players who have 
> > never heard of gnubg or who are intimidated of downloading/installing files 
> > over the Internet.  Has anyone thought of producing gnubg CDs (a full 
> > installation + manual) to give (actually sell at $1-2 each, i.e. cost only, 
> > no profit) to backgammon distributors around the world (e.g. Gammon Press, 
> > Carol Joy Cole, Backgammon Shop, etc.)?  Would this be useful?
> 
> We already talked about this at Nordic Open this year. Ken Arnold
> was distributing gnubg on ca. 7000 Gamesgrid CDs.
> 
> If gnubg will be distributed on cd there are a few questions:
> 
> - What about the money, where do we open an account?
> - Who will organize burning the cds, printing the cover, label, etc?
> - What else do we put on the cd (i.e. bigger databases)?
> - Finally: Will there be a demand on the cds in times of adsl?

Given the rate of changes being made (and, to be honest, bugfixes as
well), there's a lot to be said for not making large numbers of
CDs. Putting up an ISO of a CD, with the various versions for Windows,
Unix tarball, MAC-OS version, databases and installers might be nice,
the anyone who wants to download an ISO and put it on a CD can do
so. For those who might want to distribute gnubg, CD-burners are
ubiquitous these days and CDRs are so cheap that it doesn't make sense
to produce CDs in advance of actual demand (and it prevents ending up
with a pile of CDs with an annoying bug in the version or lacking some
new nifty feature). 

If traffic is an issue, I can provide space on ftp.demon.nl for a copy
of the downloads, including room for a some ISOs - say 10Gb or so. I
can also arrange mirroring. So if there's an issue with traffic levels
from www.gnubg.org (or if Nardy has one for his skynet account, or
Oystein with his), then setting this up and putting links on the
various sites to ftp.demon.nl's copy might be a real savings.

Advantages:

Demon NL is very well connected and has a *lot* of outgoing bandwidth
available - we wouldn't notice 20GB to 50GB/day outbound, as our
ADSL customers inbound traffic is so large in comparision.

Disadvantages:

I would need to learn how to set up the mirroring software. But I know
that several of my staff are familiar with this, so it's not really a
problem. 

I am not in a position to allow non-staff to administer even a
download area on our servers, so it has to be mirrored from somewhere
else.

There is a limit on the number of simultaneous anonymous connections,
though I don't think it's ever been hit - we're not a major ftp site
and I doubt we'd ever hit more than 10 to 15 simultaneous
connections. 

Anonymous connections still require that reverse DNS exists, so people
with truly incompetent ISPs would be unable to download (or might have
to go through someone's web proxy server).

-- 
Jim Segrave           address@hidden