[sf-lug] Who has the pressed Ubuntu CDs in their colorful sleeves?

[Rick Moen]

Quoting jim stockford (jim at well.com):

>     i'd say to heed rick moen's warning (re lugradio)
> that giving away free cds tends to be wasteful (i'm
> guessing highly so) in that people take anything
> that's free but ignore it immediately after getting it
> and forever more. i wouldn't want to call such folks
> "leeches", of course, but it might be helpful to
> qualify those to whom you give away the cds.

That's exactly it.

Back around 1997-2001, there were more _sponsored_ CD/DVD sets available
to give away:  You could get a few hundred of the latest (or, sometimes
next-to-last) SuSE Linux or Red Hat Linux release by talking to the
local office of one of those companies, e.g., for the "Silicon Valley
Tea Party" where a bunch of us got invited to Microsoft's party in Palo
Alto celebrating completion of their big Mountain View campus, and handed
out Linux CDs all evening long on the sidewalk.  (Slashdot picked up the
story, and we got people driving from as far away as San Luis Obispo to
get distro sets.)

That was also back when broadband Internet was still rare, as were
CD/DVD burners -- and consequently there were more companies selling
mail-order or retail distro CD-jewel-case sets than now (Infomagic,
Walnut Creek CD-ROM, Linux Mall, Linux System Labs, Cheapbytes,
Yggdrasil).  A data CD was more valuable because it was something you
had to pay good money for, if you didn't get it some other way.

Obviously, CD/DVDs do have value if you get them to the right people,
and they might even be grateful to you -- but booth giveaways seldom
work out that way, and are perceived by most as just more free junk.