Yes, it’s real! Last week Katie remarked we were running low on coffee, and I remembered an article on MozillaZine a few weeks ago about RJ Tarpley’s Mozilla Coffee. I figured, what the heck, let’s order some. It’s a way to get coffee and support Mozilla at the same time.
We went out for a late lunch/early dinner today, and as we came up the stairs we noticed a note tucked into the doorframe. At first I figured UPS had left a “sorry we missed you” note, but when we got up to the landing, the doormat was propped up on a six inch tall box! (That and it turned out to be FedEx, but I digress.) “Hey, no one will notice if we hide this under the doormat!”
We haven’t tried it yet, but we’ll post the results of our taste-test once we do.
I just realized we never posted about the actual coffee. Yes, it’s good! In fact, I just ordered a new bag last night.
I want some of this coffee. But I go to RJ Tarpley’s website and all they want to sell me is some penis enlargement deal. Sketch.
The store’s long gone. Even the domain name had vanished by September 2004. RJ Tarpley himself left a comment on my SFX blog about what happened: he got stuck packaging and shipping everything himself, and after a while he just didn’t have the time.
It sucks that the domain’s been snapped up by a pillz vendor. I’m sure they bought it because it’s already got links from high-profile sites like MozillaZine. In cases like this, the Wayback Machine is your friend. Here’s the store as it was in June 2004.
Hey guys. I ran across your post yesterday upon entering my old website. A friend called me yesterday and happened to enter my old website from an old bookmark. Lo and behold, that site is selling penis products! I am a damn fool for not keeping that domain in case I wanted to start it up again in the future. I must admit that it is embarrassing seeing that with my name on it.
If you guys would be interested in getting the coffee send me an email. I think the roaster would gladly ship a bag or two out directly. In fact, his franchises are starting to dot the South and it will be interesting to see it grow. Let me know if you guys have any interest in the Mozilla Mugs because I still have about 100 of them.
Again, I wish the program could have run longer and I am so sorry that these people bought the domain and tainted what I think was a unique model for companies to support open source.
Ron Tarpley
[…] To help clear this up we’re working on one landing page that will link to all available stores. This will make it easier to see everything that’s available and will allow us to easily add more things people are interested in (does anyone remember Mozilla coffee?) […]