Using Computer Stores to Spread Open Source?

DigitalRaptor asks: "I live in a small city with about 4 or 5 computer stores, most of whom I know personally. None of these stores offer Open Source software on the computers they sell (Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, etc), and none of them have anything in place to educate their customers about spyware and viruses. I'd like to approach them with all of the relevant information in a presentable format. I think this would be a great way to spread OSS and to help the average consumer at the same time. Is there a project out there for this purpose that local advocates could use to approach computer stores in their town?"

Comments

TheOpenCD

[slavemowgli]

Have you checked out TheOpenCD? That one contains a number of well-known and useful open-source applications for Windows; it should be easy to make (possibly customized) copies of that one to include with new computers, for example.

the Windows Toolbox

[thegoldenear]

the Windows Toolbox - http://thegoldenear.org/ - all the software on one CD

Re:Eh, and who is going to support the oss...?

[hankaholic]

To my knowledge, no one actually sells a (support) license or a retail box for any of these products. (Maybe OO.org... but definitely not FF or T-bird.) (emphasis mine)

You should really ask someone to update mozilla.org then -- they seem to think that "[t]elephone support at 1-888-586-4539 is available for Firefox 0.9 and above, Thunderbird 0.8 and above, and final Mozilla release versions 1.5, 1.6, and above. $39.95 per incident." When you mention this to the webmaster, mention that you saw the text above at http://www.mozilla.org/support/.

So, who is going to support these additional software packages? Who is going to be responsible for the software if/when it breaks, or if/when Firefox leads to a virus infecting the computer?

Who is responsible if/when Internet Explorer breaks, or if/when it leads to a virus infecting the computer? Last I checked, Microsoft won't "be responsible" either, in terms of cleaning up messes they allow to be created through bugs in their software.

Geeks often forget that a major part of the computer industry is support. [...] At least, when you have a licensed copy of MS office, and it goes whacko, you can call up MS and demand that they fix it. Can the same be said of the OSS that you listed?

Support is often a consideration with enterprise-level deployments. For such cases, there are third parties that are more than happy to offer support for OSS software. Sun themselves offers support contracts for OpenOffice.

For home users of Office, Microsoft offers two free phone support incidents, but only if your copy came from them. If it came preinstalled, you'll have to call your PC vendor (who will likely do very little to help) or pay Microsoft $35 per incident ($245 for "advanced issues"). I'd imagine that most people didn't buy a retail copy of Office, which means that there's no free support for the average user.

and there is no 1-800 number to call for help, either.

Microsoft offers an 800 number only for the fee-based support. If you bought a retail copy of Office (which is the example you gave), and are taking advantage of one of your two free incidents, you'll be calling (425) 635-7056.

Maybe before citing the myriad of support options available from OEMs at reasonable costs to home users, you might consider the real-world availability to those users. Bundled software is up to the PC manufacturer to support, and generally their support ends by suggesting use of the system restore CD. This means that bundled software is virtually unsupported, and the average user isn't likely to pay tons of money for a retail box -- they'll borrow from a friend long before, and anyways are so used to being pushed aside by ineffectual support departments that they expect very little in terms of vendor support anyways.

Re:Eh, and who is going to support the oss...?

[cbiltcliffe]

At least, when you have a licensed copy of MS office, and it goes whacko, you can call up MS and demand that they fix it. Can the same be said of the OSS that you listed?

No, you can't. At least, not if it's an OEM copy, which is what you're likely to get on any computer you buy. The manufacturer of the computer is supposed to support OEM stuff, which puts them in the exact same place as they would be with F/LOSS.
Would you rather support something that you can see the code and actually fix, or something monolithic and obscure that may or may not have a patch forthcoming? I know which I'd pick....