Some of you know me from the LibreOffice documentation team. I am also involved (as Secretary-Treasurer) with an Australia-based not-for-profit association, Friends of OpenDocument Inc., which handles the money raised from sales of printed copies of OOo and LO user guides and other books.
We are currently holding around AUD9,000 (more than USD9,000, or around EUR7,250 at current exchange rates) in the (former) OOoAuthors account and around AUD1,000 in the LibreOffice account. More comes in each month. Money from LO book sales is exclusively for LO use. In addition... With two communities (LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice) replacing the former OOo, and with a large number of the people who worked on OOo user guides now working with LO, it seems only fair that the money in the former OOoAuthors account be made available to LO as well as ApacheOO. Instead of giving the LO money to The Document Foundation for general expenses, we think it is better to make it available to cover expenses that The Document Foundation can't or won't deal with. Some examples might be the cost of marketing materials (including copies of the user guides) for tables at events, attendance at events aimed at potential and actual customers (librarians, educators, etc), or just about anything that would be valuable for spreading awareness and growing the community and the customer base. We don't have a very formal process for people to request money, but you would need to give enough info about what you want the money for, how much, who's involved, and so on, so the Friends of OpenDocument Inc's Management Committee can evaluate your request. BTW, we welcome new members; no charge to join. Info about membership is on the website, which is rarely updated except for financial statements and notices of meetings required by law (and the minutes of those meetings). --Jean Hollis Weber http://friendsofopendocument.com/ -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to marketing+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/marketing/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted