About Us

The Dutch Debian Distribution Initiative is a Chamber of Commerce registered firm that since ca. 1997 (in various forms) is aiming towards the ongoing distribution of the Debian GNU/Linux Operating System on a low-profit basis.

The DDDI is being run by the two brothers Anne and Maarten Bezemer, respectively having studied Electrical Engineering and studying Technical Informatics at the Delft University of Technology.

To be fully clear: the DDDI has no connection whatsoever with the Delft University of Technology; it is a separate and independent activity.

Production

The CDs and DVDs we provide are Recordables (CD-Rs and DVD+/-Rs), that we burn ourselves. For series of up to a few thousand items, this is cheaper than having them manufactured by a CD/DVD production company. Furthermore, as a consequence of the limited stock kept, official updates can be applied very quickly.

The brand of media varies, as we are continuously searching for the best quality media at an acceptable price. This way, it may happen that two subsequent identical orders are delivered on different brands or types of media.

We currently burn DVDs with a NEC ND-3551A writer; we also use it for CDs, alongside a LiteOn LTR-52327S and a Memorex FortyMAXX. CDs are usually written at 16x speed and DVDs at 4x speed, because that gives the best results for most media brands.

Prior to shipment, all CDs and DVDs are completely checked for readability. CDs are checked using a Philips 24x speed CD-ROM drive, an extremely sensitive model, which enables us to remove all less good CDs from the series. The same is true for the LiteOn DVD drive using which the DVDs are checked.

The content of all CDs and DVDs labeled "Official" comes directly from http://cdimage.debian.org, the site on which the official Debian CD and DVD images are published. The "Unofficial" CDs originate from other sources.

Website

The website of the DDDI forms a complex unity with the back-end programs. All aspects of it were developed in-house. Next to an efficient system for production planning, there is a direct interface with gnucash for bookkeeping purposes.

As far as necessary, the pages use 'POST' requests to transfer data to the CGI programs that generate dynamic pages 'on the fly'. No Java[tm] or 'cookies' are used, which makes all pages work in any browser.

All CGI programs are C programs, that use the cgic standard library. The database used is a Berkeley db2 type with binary tree indexing. The records contain a fully recursive data structure of arbitrary length, which eases programming considerably.

The total size of the C code is more than 8000 lines. The code is completely internationalized; at the moment there are English and Dutch language libraries of about 70 kB text each.

Very limited warranty

Because we don't want you to blame us or the Debian project, we do our very best to prevent and (where possible) resolve any problems. But because we use many services of others (for example postal services), we can only offer a very limited warranty, solely on things we do ourselves.

Therefore we apply the following rule:

IF any customer is unable to read a CD or DVD provided by us in his/her CD-ROM drive of at least 24x speed or DVD-ROM drive of at least 8x speed respectively, AND we can (still) read that CD/DVD after return shipment, THEN a free replacement CD/DVD will be shipped to that customer. Only on the first replacement CD/DVD, this regulation is applicable as well. As usual, the return shipment of the 'unreadable' CD/DVD is to be paid for by the customer.
(The second condition is necessary to exclude possible transport damage, because that is not covered by any warranty. Still, the applied packaging materials virtually guarantee undamaged delivery. As noted above, we only ship CDs and DVDs that we can read ourselves.)

In all other situations there is NO WARRANTY WHATSOEVER, namely as detailed here:

THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR ANY PRODUCT, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EVERY PRODUCT IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF ANY PRODUCT IS WITH YOU. SHOULD ANY PRODUCT PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.

IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW WILL ANYONE BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE ANY PRODUCT (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF ANY PRODUCT TO (INTER)OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PRODUCT OR ITEM), EVEN IF SUCH PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

This also means that we do not accept any liability if the postal service does not deliver a package. However, in practice, there hasn't been any problem with this. We can order insured (registered) transport of the packages. However, this means so much more work for us that we then have to charge EUR 13,00 extra per package. A request for insured (registered) transport must be made using the comments facility when placing the order. We will then adjust the total price manually.