Re: Why not create packages?

[David Lawyer <dave@lafn.org>]

Corrections and typos that no one caught:  Sorry for not proofreading
the original.

On Thu, Jul 20, 2000 at 07:28:17PM -0700, David Lawyer wrote:
> Although this wouldn't help much at the present time, what about
> having an "obsolete" category of HOWTO that would include HOWTOs that
> almost no one would want.  It would be suggested that they not be
> included in most distributions.  "Obsolete" HOWTOs would be ones which
> less than say 1 in 40,000 people would want to read.  This ratio is
> not fixed.  I estimated it as follows:
> 
> Assume that people will use up costly harddrive space to store the
> HOWTOs but get the HOWTOs via CD.  The cost of disk space is $10/GB.
> For a 0.1MB HOWTO this costs $0.001 for storage.  But during the life
> of the disk, the space on it (for HOWTOs) may be reused say 5 times so
> the cost of storage is only $0.00002.  So the social cost of x persons
			      $0.0002
> getting this HOWTO they don't need is $0.0002x.  Now say the cost of
> someone who does need the HOWTO of manually getting it is $8 (mostly
> the bother of doing it).  So we equate $0.0002x = $8 to get the
> break-even point and find x=40,000 persons.  This is cost-benefit
> analysis and as conditions change, x obviously changes.  If getting a
> HOWTO is automated so that it's only $1 of bother (on average) then
> x=320,000.  However if harddisks come down in price by a factor of 10
  x=5,000
> then x=4,000.
       x=400,000
			David Lawyer


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