In my recent attempt to revive the LocalContacts program, and with the responses I’ve received, I’ve noticed that a lot of people are unsure of the distinctions between the Freemedia and LocalContact programs. This blog post is an attempt at clarifying the two.
The Fedora Freemedia Program.
If you sign up to volunteer for this program, you get added to the “freemedia” group in the FAS and have access to the freemedia trac. The trac is the infra that Susmit and the other freemedia leads set up to make it easier for contributors to handle the vast number of tickets that come in every month.
In the freemedia program, when you accept a ticket, you burn the media, buy the envelop, send it, all out of your own pocket.
LocalContacts
The LocalContacts is also aimed at making fedora media more easily available to people. There may be people in the same city, or even the same apartment as an ambassador’s (lets call him Angus), who’d like to use fedora (lets say David wants media). It isn’t practical for someone from the other side of the country (lets call him Stephen ) to post these people media under the freemedia program, when the David can meet Angus and get media burnt. There are quite a few advantages of this scheme over the freemedia program:
- Promotes interaction between David and Angus. In the freemedia program, you send media out, and it ends there. You don’t meet physically, there is no feedback, nothing.
- More cost effective. It costs Stephen almost 50INR per ticket serviced at the freemedia program. When the David gets media from Angus in person, David incurs the cost of media. Also note that here, there is a total of INR $price_of_DVD spent in the Local Contacts program. In the freemedia program, the INR spent would be ($price_of_DVD + $price_of_envelope + $price_of_postage).
It was my understanding that a Fedora Ambassador is by default a LocalContact. Therefore, a separate scheme was not required. However, over the last few weeks, this understanding has changed.
David, Angus and Stephen:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Coverdale
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Young
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Pearcy
Ankur's Tech blog 
> “Promotes interaction between David and Angus. In the freemedia program, you send media out, and it ends there. You don’t meet physically, there is no feedback, nothing.”
Why not?
What prevents Angus to realize that he actually leaves very close to David and meet him instead of sending him the media?
We’ve tried this numerous times. We’ve replied to the ticket saying we’re in the area and that we can schedule a meeting instead of mailing media. We don’t get replies
Out of the 6-7 tickets from bangalore who I requested to meet me in person, two replied. The other’s have not. I even listed my phone number in the email to make contacting me easier. The Freemedia program gives the requesters the feeling of a “fill and forget” form where they fill the form and then assume that someday, someone will look at their request and ultimately, media will get to them.
> “The Freemedia program gives the requesters the feeling of a “fill and forget””
I honestly think that giving people this impression is wrong, and goes against the spirit of sharing we have in the Free Software world.
Maybe that’s what needs to be fixed? Make sure that people understand that Freemedia is:
– run by volunteers who invest their own money
– not destined to ship media to anyone who doesn’t even care about it more than to just have a CD « because it’s free » ?
Of course, I must admit that I’ve never taken part in Freemedia, so I might not know the whole story. Then again, I never participated specifically because I never liked the « fire and forget » thing, I always preferred handing out media along with an actual dialog.
In any case, don’t take that as a criticism of the work you do in Freemedia. You’re doing something, and that’s awesome. This is merely my reflexions on the program, not the people behind it. 🙂
Hey bobecha!
> Maybe that’s what needs to be fixed? Make sure that people understand that Freemedia is:
>- run by volunteers who invest their own money
>- not destined to ship media to anyone who doesn’t even care about it more than to just have a CD « because it’s free » ?
We’ve been trying to do this, but really, there is no way to clearly gauge one’s motivation for requesting media. I’ve written up a draft of the distribution process which would hopefully encourage people to use other channels for obtaining fedora.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Ankursinha/Fedora_Freemedia_Start
Ankur