| DistroWatch Timesavers |
| A d v e r t i s e m e n t |
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| 2004-03-20 |
Notice to Members of the Timesavers Programme |
| The Timesavers programme has been discontinued with immediate effect.
Launched in January 2003, the idea behind Timesavers was to get extra income in exchange for providing special features (custom comparisons charts, searches and other requested features) for those who were willing to support the site financially. Unfortunately, the programme did not prove particularly popular, with an average of 12 people joining each month.
After 15 months of procrastinating and promising to start working on the Timesavers features next week and next week..., I have to admit defeat. I just don't have the time. With nearly 300 distributions listed on the site, all my time is taken up by posting news, adding new distributions and maintaining existing information. Besides that, I am also a regular contributor to the the distribution section of Linux Weekly News and an irregular contributor to NewsForge. Hard as I tried, I couldn't find a way to extend days beyond 24 hours.
Also, my earlier appeal to attract a third-party developer to work on the Timesavers features turned out to be unsuccessful - although a developer started working on the features, he has not logged in to the server for several weeks and all attempts to contact him during the past few weeks failed.
If you have joined Timesavers and are disappointed by the programme's demise, here are your options:
- Get a refund. If you'd like a refund, please email me (my email address is at the bottom of this page) about your preferred way of receiving the refund (PayPal or cheque) and the relevant details.
- Get a DistroWatch T-shirt for US$10. The standard price for a DistroWatch T-shirt is US$17 + shipping and handling, but you can have it for US$10, including shipping and handling. If you'd like to take advantage of this offer, please email me the details of your physical address and pay US$10 to DistroWatch (via PayPal or 2CheckOut, details are on the advertiser's page). I will then place the order for the T-shirt on your behalf.
- Support open source projects. You can ask for your joining fee to be placed into a pool to be donated to open source projects. This is a newly launched initiative, details of which will be announced on Monday, 22 March 2004 in DistroWatch Weekly.
- Do nothing. Just enjoy the feeling that you have helped supporting DistroWatch financially :-)
Despite this bad news, all is not lost. I still hope to attract a volunteer PHP coder who will be willing to implement some of the often requested features (such as the custom comparison chart). These will then be available to all visitors free of charge.
Finally, my sincere apologies to all of you who have supported this site and who have been looking forward to seeing the new features implemented in the near future. Despite my unfulfilled promise, I hope that you will continue visiting the site and enjoying the existing content.
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| Updates |
| 2004-03-20 A decision has been made to discontinue the Timesavers programme.
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