Re: Raising money for Debian
[...I realize campaigning is over; but I notice after a busy weekend that several questions were asked fairly last-minute, so...] On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 10:26:28PM +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote: Hello, there's a discussion going on on debian-project about entering an agreement with DuckDuckGo to get some sort of affiliate commission from the money that DuckDuckGo would earn from traffic tagged as coming from Debian. 1/ To Wouter and Gergely: this discussion touches several sensitive topics but you have not taken position... what do you think of the project? Reading that discussion, I see two concerns being raised: Some people point out that entering in such an agreement could damage relations with upstreams who may have different agreements of that sort. As I understand the proposed agreement, however, this shouldn't be an issue. It has, or will be, made clear to DDG that implementation of the agreement would be entirely voluntary for our maintainers; no package would be required to be modified so it would generate the revenue streams for Debian. Since our package maintainers are also our main contact points with upstream, this means that they can easily dodge that bullet should the need arise; all that is required is that we formulate any explanation of this agreement in Policy or the devref, wherever appropriate, in such a fashion that it's clear it can be ignored if it would be harmful to upstream relations. A second concern is about implied loss of privacy of the proposed agreement for people using Debian. I agree that it's a bit weird for a search engine that claims not to track their users to suddenly start doing so, if only on the basis of operating system usage, if it gains them money; but in the long run, I don't think that's really our problem. Debian is not a distribution for the privacy paranoid (there are other distributions, some of which are Debian Derivatives, that try to be that), and while it may be good to not needlessly make it difficult for people who care about their privacy a great deal, I don't think adding a string Debian in a configurable search URL means a great deal for such matters. 2/ To all: are there other ways to raise money that we have not yet explored and that we should try? We could add a welcome screen, shown upon completion of installation, that explains who to contribute in various ways (technical, monetary, by talking about it, ...) 3/ To all: The commercial world is full of such win-win opportunities. Some are more obnoxious than other. Are there some that would be acceptable in the Debian context according to you? Where would you draw the limit? When monetary agreements make technical decisions difficult or impossible, we'll have ceased to be a volunteer organization, so that should not happen. Any agreement that gains the project as a whole money which does not impede maintainers to make correct technical decisions, however, is something I think we should welcome. If you need some examples: an hosting company could give back x% of the monthly fee paid by customers running Debian servers and would likely appreciate some promotion of this offer on the Debian side. There is a book editor who is giving $1 for each sold copy of their Debian book. If there are sufficient such offers, adding them to the How to help Debian section of our website seems like the right thing to do. We may want to also make announcements on the -project website when they are added, or perhaps create a more appropriate mailinglist for that purpose. Etc. Most of those offers are created for marketing reasons in the hope to get noticed/promoted within the Debian community. Shall we promote those? I think we can and should promote such offers if we can do it in a non-obnoxious way. I think the examples I gave above are not obnoxious. Examples of things that would be somewhat obnoxious is to start adding banners to our website, or add them to our mailinglists like sourceforge does, etc; I would not like to see them, but don't generally mind them on websites I visit provided they don't get in the way. One step further, and thus *completely* out of the question (if the above wasn't already) is things like javascript click-through ads. Can we just inform people about their existence without promoting them? No, because if we inform people about the existence of such offers, we are by definition promoting the offers. You can't promote something and not promote it at the same time. We can consider /how/ we promote them, however, and I think if we can do it -- The volume of a pizza of thickness a and radius z can be described by the following formula: pi zz a -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120402091537.gb21...@grep.be
Re: Raising money for Debian
On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 10:26:28PM +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
2/ To all: are there other ways to raise money that we have not yet
explored and that we should try?
At the risk of flogging a dead horse, I haven't felt good at the idea of
raising more money up to now, because I don't think we were being
transparent enough on how we use those money. This is changing now (see
my platform for some references) and I'm finally starting to feel a bit
more confident with the idea. Also, it looks like we're going to need
some money in the future, at least if we want to implement some
ambitious hardware replacement plans [1], as I think we should.
[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2012/03/msg00032.html
All that considered, I think the single most effective way of raising
money for a project like Debian is to knock at companies doors, make
them realize that Debian *is* important for them, engage then in some
yearly donation plans, and acknowledge that with some level-like badge
on the Debian website. As discussed in one of the first thread of this
campaign, we're already doing that, but only for DebConf. We just need
to make that fund-raising effort a bit more structured and general.
All other ways to fund-raise (including the DuckDuckGo example) are good
to have, but I don't think we need to plan ahead for them or anything
such. I believe handling them on a case by case basis is good enough.
3/ To all: The commercial world is full of such win-win opportunities.
Some are more obnoxious than other. Are there some that would be
acceptable in the Debian context according to you? Where would you draw
the limit?
If you need some examples: an hosting company could give back x% of the
monthly fee paid by customers running Debian servers and would likely
appreciate some promotion of this offer on the Debian side. There is
a book editor who is giving $1 for each sold copy of their Debian book.
Etc. Most of those offers are created for marketing reasons in the hope to
get noticed/promoted within the Debian community. Shall we promote those?
Can we just inform people about their existence without promoting them?
We've discussed this a couple of times this year on -publicity, IIRC. My
opinion on the matter is unchanged. I think we should inform our users
of resources that are useful to them as Debian users, but not _because_
those resources will result in Debian donations. Otherwise stated, the
goal of Debian should be that of making user interests directly, *not*
indirectly due to arguments like it will benefit users in the long term
because we'll use money to make Debian better.
This is a general principle that can be instantiated to various
examples:
- if, independently from donations, we decide to index on www.d.o
hosting companies that offer Debian as an option, we should do that
for all hosting companies we're aware of
- if, independently from donations, we index books about Debian (as we
do), we should do that for all books we're aware of
- if, independently from donations, we index shops that sell Debian
merchandise (as we do), we should do that for all shops we're aware of
Regarding promotion vs information, I think information like the above
is just fine, as long as the resource is useful per se, independently
from donations. I also think it's fine, and even a duty, to inform users
of how much Debian receives from the various options (e.g. percentages
of sell prices). That, for me, is not promotion but information, even
though I do realize it might influence user choices.
I think we should stay away from more promotion than the above
(e.g. -news items announcing: here is the new thing, buy it and you'll
contribute $100 to Debian), because it'll be very hard to be fair to
all vendors.
Cheers.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} . o .
Maître de conférences .. http://upsilon.cc/zack .. . . o
Debian Project Leader... @zack on identi.ca ...o o o
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »
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Re: Raising money for Debian
Raphael Hertzog hert...@debian.org writes: there's a discussion going on on debian-project about entering an agreement with DuckDuckGo to get some sort of affiliate commission from the money that DuckDuckGo would earn from traffic tagged as coming from Debian. 1/ To Wouter and Gergely: this discussion touches several sensitive topics but you have not taken position... what do you think of the project? I'm afraid I can't answer just yet: I haven't finished reading the thread yet. After a quick glimpse through the thread, I think there are certainly good arguments to accept the offer, but, as others expressed in the thread, there are valid concerns too. Unfortunately, without reading the whole thing, I'd rather not take a position, and catching up on the thread may take a day or two more. 2/ To all: are there other ways to raise money that we have not yet explored and that we should try? One idea that comes to my mind, is that we seem to focus a wee-bit too much on raising money at times. While I agree that we do need money, for hardware, travel and sprint sponsorships and a whole lot of other things I have little insight into, there are alternative ways. The problem I see with 'raising money' is that those who donate have little control over how that money is used. While that works for many, it might very well stop others (especially companies) from donating. Transparency helps here, and Stefano's work on this front is very important. But it's not enough, in my opinion. We already seek sponsors for DebConf, and have had events hosted or sponsored by various entities. This kind of donation is something we should focus more in, I believe. Perhaps it's not (entirely) monetary, and is tied to a specific event, but it's still useful, and as far as I can imagine, it might be easier to find sponsors for specific tasks, than to raise money that can be spent in any number of ways. People, especially commercial companies, do like to retain some level of control on what their money is used for. While this is not neccessarily a good thing in every case, it's something we could explore and experiment with more. 3/ To all: The commercial world is full of such win-win opportunities. Some are more obnoxious than other. Are there some that would be acceptable in the Debian context according to you? Where would you draw the limit? This one's a tough question. I do not think we should promote either of the examples you gave. Recognise? Yes. But not promote. There's a very thin line between the two, and I admit I have no idea how this could be accomplished. I believe each of these opportunities should be carefully evaluated. As for where to draw the line? I don't know. I have no problem with listing companies as sponsors for DebConf, for example, nor listing sponsors for sprints and BSPs and the like. I would have a problem with a www.debian.org/sponsors page, though. In general, though, I'd draw the line slightly above where the general consensus within the project does. -- |8] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87zkaw1lgd@luthien.mhp
Raising money for Debian
Hello, there's a discussion going on on debian-project about entering an agreement with DuckDuckGo to get some sort of affiliate commission from the money that DuckDuckGo would earn from traffic tagged as coming from Debian. 1/ To Wouter and Gergely: this discussion touches several sensitive topics but you have not taken position... what do you think of the project? 2/ To all: are there other ways to raise money that we have not yet explored and that we should try? 3/ To all: The commercial world is full of such win-win opportunities. Some are more obnoxious than other. Are there some that would be acceptable in the Debian context according to you? Where would you draw the limit? If you need some examples: an hosting company could give back x% of the monthly fee paid by customers running Debian servers and would likely appreciate some promotion of this offer on the Debian side. There is a book editor who is giving $1 for each sold copy of their Debian book. Etc. Most of those offers are created for marketing reasons in the hope to get noticed/promoted within the Debian community. Shall we promote those? Can we just inform people about their existence without promoting them? Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer Pre-order a copy of the Debian Administrator's Handbook and help liberate it: http://debian-handbook.info/liberation/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120330202628.gb23...@rivendell.home.ouaza.com
