A marketing idea for IPFire

[ms (Michael Tremer)]

Hello once more,

@tratru

The first is to make a donation of €10 per month for example, with this choice you provide economic funds to be able to pay for the servers for example, but with this solution that I consider absolutely necessary, it does not increase the user base, at least if it does so in a small part

We need to stop believing that open source projects can survive with the occasional donation of a tenner. If you actually want to make a difference here, we need BIG things.

@tratru

Precisely on the occasion of the Hackinbo event some people we met had asked us the possibility of purchasing material to support the project.

This confirms exactly my point that I just made here:

IPFire merchandise

I am very sorry to say this, but it isn’t a good thing to do this. It has been raised a couple of times that we should do some merchandise and it has been discussed many times at length. We have however decided against doing this because of a long list of reasons. Here are a couple: For a start, we could not find a very good supplier which would meet our criteria. Those are except obviously having good quality products for a great price a provider that can manufacture in multiple places; at …

This will take funding away from the project which is the last thing that we need in this day and age. If you actually wanted to collect some money for the project, a t-shirt would cost $50. Who is supposed to pay this? If people have $50 to spend on the project, then donate it. It will go a much longer way.

@tratru

Just as an example, having a coffee mug with the IPFire logo on it or going for a run in the park with the IPFire t-shirt makes the solution known

IPFire is not a project for the masses. We don’t need TV advertising because you will reach a lot of people who administrate zero IT devices. You want targeted advertising to the right people, unless you have unlimited budget that you can blow on advertising to people who will never ever buy your product?

@tratru

I don’t want to say that it is the solution to the problem but it could be a small grain of sand that helps to make the project known, without considering that we could start by relying on a platform where they take care of everything (printing, e-commerce and delivery) so the only thing that remains the responsibility of the community is only the graphic design and providing IBAN for the profits

This is yet another wrong assumption. Did you even consider talking to a lawyer before setting up this shop? You have a random privacy policy according to the law of California. The name “IPFire Italia” suggests, and we all know this too, that you are in Italy. You fall under European and Italian Law. You are promoting this, you are the seller. Please make this very clear on that shop. People cannot assume that this is an official shop that has any affiliation with the project. You are responsible for everything around this and the company is simply a someone that you contracted to host the shop and make the goods. They are lying to you if they tell you otherwise.

I am so angry now.