publish-on-demand CDs?

[Donald Whytock <dw...@gmail.com>]

Starting to see more requests for AOO CDs.  Is there the equivalent of
Lulu/CafePress for CDs/DVDs, such that they can be supplied with a
current image and people purchase them at cost and get them mailed?

Might reduce the whole sell-on-ebay thang and ensure that people can
safely buy a legitimate copy.

Don

Re: publish-on-demand CDs?

[Rob Weir <ro...@apache.org>]

On Tue, Jan 22, 2013 at 9:52 AM, Donald Whytock <dw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Starting to see more requests for AOO CDs.  Is there the equivalent of
> Lulu/CafePress for CDs/DVDs, such that they can be supplied with a
> current image and people purchase them at cost and get them mailed?
>

The coolest thing I saw in this area was when I was in South Africa.
It was called the "Freedom Toaster":

http://www.freedomtoaster.org/

Think of it like a vending machine for open source software.  Useful
in populated areas where bandwidth is low.

But for mail order, I don't know of one.  But this could be something
for Amazon to think about.  They recently did a thing where they would
rip music CD's that you purchase and give you the MP3's as well.  Why
not offer to mail media for the downloadable software they already
offer? (They already offer downloads of AOO 3.4.1).

-Rob




> Might reduce the whole sell-on-ebay thang and ensure that people can
> safely buy a legitimate copy.
>
> Don

Re: publish-on-demand CDs?

[Donald Whytock <dw...@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Jan 22, 2013 at 10:03 AM, Jürgen Schmidt <jo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/22/13 3:52 PM, Donald Whytock wrote:
>> Starting to see more requests for AOO CDs.  Is there the equivalent of
>> Lulu/CafePress for CDs/DVDs, such that they can be supplied with a
>> current image and people purchase them at cost and get them mailed?
>>
>> Might reduce the whole sell-on-ebay thang and ensure that people can
>> safely buy a legitimate copy.
>
>
> I am not aware of it but I know we thought about collaboration with jobs
> to make general merchandising stuff easy available on demand for
> interested users. Probably worth to think about it again in a broader
> sense. Something like t-shirts, mugs, bags, etc.
>
> All we need are volunteers who want to drive it and nice cool designs.
> We can set a price that covers the production and jobs cost + a minimal
> fee to support the project and which goes back to Apache in some way.
> Details have to figured out...
>

Seems they do exist.  The first one that popped up for me is
http://kunaki.com which appears to be extremely no-nonsense.  They'll
produce and ship a CD in a jewel case with cover art and shrinkwrap
pretty much anywhere in the world for about US$5.25.  No setup cost.

You can't update the product once it's created, but you can create a
new product when you want.  So one could create an AOO 3.4 product, a
3.4.1 product, etc.

I assume that even if this was set up to operate at cost there would
still need to be an ASF account associated with it, if AOO was going
to list it as a certified source of CDs...?

Re: publish-on-demand CDs?

[Jürgen Schmidt <jo...@gmail.com>]

On 1/22/13 3:52 PM, Donald Whytock wrote:
> Starting to see more requests for AOO CDs.  Is there the equivalent of
> Lulu/CafePress for CDs/DVDs, such that they can be supplied with a
> current image and people purchase them at cost and get them mailed?
> 
> Might reduce the whole sell-on-ebay thang and ensure that people can
> safely buy a legitimate copy.


I am not aware of it but I know we thought about collaboration with jobs
to make general merchandising stuff easy available on demand for
interested users. Probably worth to think about it again in a broader
sense. Something like t-shirts, mugs, bags, etc.

All we need are volunteers who want to drive it and nice cool designs.
We can set a price that covers the production and jobs cost + a minimal
fee to support the project and which goes back to Apache in some way.
Details have to figured out...


Juergen