True, whether or not to pursue the exploitation of an e-commerce activity by The ASF is something that needs to analysed thoroughly regarding the fiscal and social implications.
But, before such endeavour is undertaken the ASF could use the capabilities of OFBiz to showcase the books related to the works of the Apache Projects (without opening it up to take in orders). This could assist (in a unified way) in branding the products of the Apache projects. And this can be done by (delegated to) any interested contributor within any project. And thereby achieving that the list of books is more up to date than it is today. Best regards, Pierre Smits *ORRTIZ.COM <http://www.orrtiz.com>* Services & Solutions for Cloud- Based Manufacturing, Professional Services and Retail & Trade http://www.orrtiz.com On Mon, Oct 13, 2014 at 6:13 PM, Ted Dunning <ted.dunn...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Mon, Oct 13, 2014 at 11:27 AM, jan i <j...@apache.org> wrote: > > > On 13 October 2014 16:30, Pierre Smits <pierre.sm...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > > Rich, > > > > > > How about drop shipments directly from the publishing party, if they > can > > > handle that? That way no inventory would be required. > > > > > > With OFBiz The ASF can take the ordersin (not only for books, but also > > > promotion stuff like t-shirts, banners, buttons, etc), accept the > payment > > > (credit card, etc) and send the supply order to the party handling the > > drop > > > shipments. > > > > > Technically I am sure OFBiz can handle it, but how does this work with > our > > non-profit status, I am not sure we can freely sell goods without paying > > taxes. > > > > > The ASF will absolutely have to pay taxes and the rules will vary for every > city in the US (not to mention every other jurisdiction in the world). > > Expecting that Apache has the resources to actually run a full-scale > e-commerce business with reasonable tax and PCI compliance is absolutely > nuts (in my oh so very humble opinion based on having built 2 substantial > consumer businesses and been very involved in 2 major anti-fraud > companies). > > Volunteer staffing for any significant e-commerce effort is simply not > sufficient. >
