From: tytso@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Theodore Ts'o)
Subject: Re: No FTP ... HELP!
Reply-To: tytso@athena.mit.edu
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 1992 00:12:07 GMT

To firm up my previous offer:  As of February 1st, I will make available
diskettes which contain the Linux distribution and utilities.  The
distribution fee which I will charge is US $5.00/diskette, with shipping
and handling costs of:

$2.50 * (ceil(number of 5" diskettes/5) + ceil(number of 3" diskettes/3)) 
        For addresses within US/Canada

$5.00 * (ceil(number of 5" diskettes/5) + ceil(number of 3" diskettes/3)) 
        For other addresses

Note that the Linux distribution is freely available; I do not plan to
get rich over this.  Once you a Linux distribution (by whatever means),
you are perfectly free to give away copies to whomever you wish.  I am
charging something to cover the costs of the diskettes and floppy
mailers (it doesn't even begin to cover for my time), and to encourage
people who can find some way of getting access of Linux to use them.

If someone with time to burn wants to undercut me and do it for free, or
for a reduced distribution fee, please step up.  If someone else wants
to run this service, I will have more time to do other things.  :-)

Assuming no one else steps up, I will be figuring out how to package the
distribution, and will post something about that in a week or two.
Figure on 2 disks for the boot and root images, and another 2 or 3 for
the binaries of basic utilities: gcc, diff, rcs, etc.  The source code
for the kernel, library, etc. should fit on one diskette.  Sources for
the GNU utilities will vary (and will be big).  The sources to GNU emacs
will take at least 3 disks, for example.

                                                - Ted