Sigrid Kronenberger wrote:
Andre Schnabel schrieb:
It is ok to sell CD's, Books or anything else, as long as it in line
with the licenses.
What the concern of the community council is, is that such "for sale"
items should be placed to dedicated places so that they do not get
mixed up with free community ressources. Only exception from that
rule: profits from such sales go to the OOo commnity (what meas at the
moment are handed over to Team OOo e.V.).
So, what was discussed at the Council, was to move the "by a printed
copy" links from
http://documentation.openoffice.org/manuals/index.html to another
place (e.g. the Books section at
http://support.openoffice.org/index.html
was ok).
The other option was to leave the links within the community section
but give the profits to Team OOo e.V. .
...
As said: the Council did not ask to move away the list from OOo, and
did not ask to remove all OOoAuthors documentation.
The only (still discussed, not yet requested) thing was to remove the
"by a copy here" links.
OK, when this is the real position of the CC (though André said, that
he's speaking for himself and not for the CC!) than I can accept the
decision. It would be ok for me, to remove the links. (I didn't know,
that someone (Jean?) had put them in to this page.)
Yes, I put them there. I did that as a service to users, who
might find the PDFs on the Manuals page of the Docs site, think
"I wish a printed copy were available", but have no idea to look
on a separate page to find those printed copies.
I think it is quite reasonable of the CC to request the removal
of the links to the printed copies from the Manuals page at Docs,
because that is consistent with their policies. However, I also
think (and will write to the CC on this point) that removing the
links will be disadvantageous to users, as said above. See also
below for another concern.
No. In fact, it is about having same standards for all. If you find
other places, that mix up community ressources and paid-for materials
(where profits are not used for the community), please tell.
A more immediate problem or question related to the (not yet
made) request to either remove the links or give the money to
TeamOOo: no decision has been made by the members of this list
about where the money will go. We've had some discussion on the
list, but the closest thing to a decision is "when we have some
money to decide about, then we'll decide". As it may be some time
before we have profits, I'm unhappy with the idea that we might
be asked to remove links based on speculation about what the
decision about the money may turn out to be.
Also, why does the "profits being used for the community" have to
mean only "profits go to TeamOOo to decide how to spend"?
Although some people have suggested that one use for the future
profits is to donate to a charity, I personally don't like that
idea... I think the profits should be spent to benefit OOo. Of
course we will all have different ideas and priorities on how
best to do that, but IMO it's too restrictive to say that giving
it to TeamOOo is the only acceptable way. I'm not saying it's
unreasonable for CC to demand that, but I believe that other ways
should be equally acceptable.
BTW, if I were as sneaky as Ian Laurenson seems to think I am, I
would propose that we agree to give the money to TeamOOo and then
later (when we actually have some money) change our minds! But I
much prefer to have this discussion open and honest. And if Andre
is right about changing the requirement to "some of the profits",
then perhaps we can find a compromise that everyone is happy with
(except maybe Ian).
Lastly, let me note that one way to remove this entire problem is
to sell the books at cost. No profits, nothing to argue about. I
think this would be a silly and shortsighted "solution" because
then no one would have any extra money to promote or benefit OOo
in any way.
Jean
