Andrew Douglas Pitonyak wrote:
Ian, I thought that we had discussed this on the list list.
It's been mentioned a few times. In particular, I'm pretty confident it
was mentioned at the time we picked the license for the guides. Not that
those are really related. Every open license allows selling. Welcome to
open source. It's just like people selling Linux and OpenOffice. The
difference here is that you get to pick where the money goes. This is a
service to *you*.
Now, go ahead and ask me what the profit margin is. It does annoy
me just a tad that I have no idea what the answer is, but only a tad.
I doubt it's very high. But regardless, it's not like the profit is
going to Jean or Linda. The money is going to OOoAuthors, to be used by
OOoAuthors whichever way OOoAuthors decides. Jean and Linda did the
work, and you get the benefit. And the problem with this is...?
I suggest that a discussion about printing and proceeds from selling
printed copies could be useful.
I agree, primarily because I do not remember what we discussed before
I hope you noticed that Jean's email said that OOoAuthors would discuss
and decide what to do.
It would be useful, perhaps, to understand what we will do with the
final proceeds and then determine how much of a profit to have.
Profits are impossible to predict. You can't say "I want $100". Instead,
it's better to see what profits you get, and then see what you can do
with them.
In other words, if we intend to
do nothing with the profits, then we should not bother making them.
I disagree. You can always do something with the profits. Like donate
them to your favourite charity. If I came to you and said, I want to
give you an unspecified amount of money, would you reject it on the
basis that it's not specified? That's very silly. You'd accept it, and
later decide what to do with them depending on how much it is.
Time for me to reveal my ignorance (I apologize ahead of time)
Although I like the wiki thing, I am not exactly certain how a wiki can
replace the documentation. Let me rephrase.... When I think about a
WIKI, I think "Hey, I can figure out how to solve this particular
problem". When I think of documentation, I think "Hey, I can start at
the beginning and figure out how to use this entire thing in an
organized and structured format."
I'll agree here. Though I'd phrase it differently. I think wikis are
suitable for a different type of documentation. I think a wiki is well
suited for HOWTOs and FAQs, but not for a user guide.
In addition, Wikis have the problem that they are not printer friendly.
And a user guide is the sort of thing you want to put in a printed book
because a lot of people will find it a lot more useful that way.
Cheers,
Daniel.
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