[Bf-marketing] shareware sites?

[Tom M]

> Shareware has a very bad name in opensource world. Shareware websites
> too.

I agree that shareware sites have a bad reputation in general, but
they are also a location where a lot of less savy users go to find
software.

> And outfilling software I would stay away from at all costs. The
> Blender website gets attacked by such programs too, which is extremely
> annoying.

While I agree that autofill software generally is not good to use, I
believe this software is actually an exception.  This key difference
is that it is using an industry standard that the shareware sites have
jointly specified for the submission process.  Also it is apparently
on good terms with the sites themselves.
\
> I don't think there's a problem with our distribution model (apart from
> a more efficient way to manage mirrors, but that's technical).

It isn't the distribution that is of interest but instead just
additional marketing capacity.  Right now we market almost exclusively
to existing 3D users and existing open source advocates.  Shareware
sites are an entirely different market demographic.

For instance download.com has logged 1,237 downloads since 03/16/2006
and 259 downloads this week.  While most shareware sites have much
smaller user bases it still might be worth considering.

> What we could do though is a shortlist of some quality websites to make sure
> Blender is listed uptodate there.

Certainly.

> That includes sites like sun.com/sgi.com/apple.com but also
> versiontracker.com or download.com. That's just manual work we can put
> on the release scenario list as todo.

a good idea

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