On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 1:29 AM, David Kirkby <david.kir...@onetel.net> wrote: > On 26 February 2011 06:52, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote: >> On Fri, Feb 25, 2011 at 3:16 AM, David Kirkby <david.kir...@onetel.net> >> wrote: > >>> As for the issue I raised as support contracts, then the following >>> might be a method which would not irritate anyone, so has almost zero >>> probability of losing any Sage developers. Use the money only to >>> >>> 1) Pay for extra hardware. I don't know if you have UPSs, but that >>> would increase the uptime. >> >> I have UPS's. It's important to note that purchasing hardware has a >> lot of overhead, e.g., support staff, electricity, space, air >> conditioning, etc. > > True, though to be honest I don't see this making a huge amount of money.
Making money? Your sentence does not make sense. It's more complicated than just money though... I can't add any hardware to "my" server room without carefully taking into accounts the rest of the math and CS departments usage, etc. It's just something to keep in mind. >>> 2) Pay for advertising Sage in maths journals, New Scientist, or if >>> deemed appropriate, anywhere where the 4 M's are advertised. >> >> a) Can somebody do some research on the actual costs of doing this? > > I sent an email to New Scientist asking for the prices for a full > page. 1/2, 1/4, and 1/8th page, and also what could be bought for $75 > (if anything) and $400. (I doubt you would get anything of use in > paper for $75, but you might get online advertising) > > I'll let you know if I get some prices. I did state it was > free/open-source with a link to the Sage web page. It might be cheaper > than full commercial rates - I have no idea. Many thanks! > >> b) Is 2) something that will annoy anybody reading this? I could see >> somebody being annoyed that valuable Sage money is being spent on >> advertising. (I personally think advertising is a good idea.) > > I think it is less likely to irritate than seeing it to go one individual. > > I find it hard to see how someone could be annoyed the fact you are > trying to promote via paid advertising what they work on. > > Personally I think it would be great if one could see Sage when one > did a search for Mathematica. Would anyone seriously object to that? I think it would be great. Actually, I just searched for "mathematica" in google and two of the hits on the first page are for Sage, which is cool. > >>> 3) Pay for targeted advertisements on Google - Mathematica, MATLAB, >>> Maple might be nice keywords. >> >> Can somebody do some research on the actual costs of doing this? > > I had a quick look on Google. To set up an adwords account there is a > fee of $5.00. The minimum cost/click is $0.01. You can use a pre-pay > system, with a minimum cost of $10.00. So it seems if you sold a > contract, you could do something with the $75 (per incident) and $400 > (per year). That sounds worth it. > >>> Do *not* pay any individual Sage developer or a mathematician to work >>> on some aspect of Sage, as that could potentially cause a bit of bad >>> feeling. >> >> Since many individual Sage developers have been paid to work on >> aspects of Sage over the years, I'm curious whether this has actually >> caused bad feelings. >> (Anonymous offlist responses are fine.) > > It certainly has the potential to do so. > > I doubt it would be an issue if you paid a temporary secretary to do > some work for Sage if that was felt needed. But when one developer > gets paid, and another does not, you have the potential to cause bad > feeling, which is the last thing you want to do. That's why I think > things like advertising will be less likely to irritate anyone. > >>> One could sink an endless amount of money into advertising. >>> >>> Make the "accounts" public. State the number of contracts sold >>> (obviously not to who), and disclose how the money has been spent - X >>> to Google, Y for hard disks, Z for UPS's etc. >> >> This sounds nice in theory, but it has to be balanced with it being >> precisely what customers sometimes don't want. There is little >> advantage to them to having how they spend their money publicized; it >> might help their competitors. > > You should *never* disclose who the customers are. Nobody needs to > know if Airbus, the Red Cross or anyone else buys a contract. Just "I > sold an annual contract for $400" or something like that. Given this, > I see no reason the way money is spent could be an issue. > > (Perhaps some might be concerned if the contract was sold to Colonel > Gaddafi, and them asked to support him, so perhaps you should draw the > line at that point, and refuse to sell a contract") > >>> Personally, I don't feel the amount of money raised would be huge. But >>> the fact commercial support was available, could make Sage more >>> attractive to commercial customers. >> >> It's a fact that the numerical/engineering aspects of Sage already >> have commercial support from Enthought (in the US, and other companies >> elsewhere, e.g., in France), and I've heard they are currently doing >> very well. > > I do find it hard to believe you are going to attract a lot of > customers - at least in the next few years. I don't know how many > commercial users there are now, but I suspect not too many. I think > there's too much emphasis on maths, and not enough on engineering > applications for now. So I suspect you will find the number of > industrial users is quite small. But it makes it easier for someone to > get their employer to use Sage if they can say "its free, but we can > get confidential support at reasonable rates if we need it". > > Support can be a big issue in companies. > > There are lots of companies offering support on R, but that does not > mean a lot of R users are going to switch to Sage. > > >>> I believe if the money was not payed to any individual developer, then >>> other developers would not mind providing the support for no cost. >>> (Count me as one). >>> >>>> * I'm curious if something like sagenb.org, but with Google ads, >>>> would be offensive. I could see somebody starting a small business >>>> that is just public notebook servers that also have ads. >>> >>> Personally I have no objection. Even a "Paypal donate" button might be >>> a good idea. >> >> I have to plug that we have a "donate" button already: >> >> htt[s://www.washington.edu/giving/make-a-gift?page=make&Code=MATSAG > > I mean if it on the main Sage server at > > http://www.sagemath.org/ There is a link from sagemath.org to the above. It is in the middle on the bottom. Maybe it should be biger. > > (which reminds me. Yesterday this was down with a message about What is "this"? > maintenance or similar - some sort of server was clearly running. It > looked like Apache to me. In which case, why not have a message on the > page directing people to other servers like > http://t2nb.math.washington.edu:8080/ ?) > >> Our might even be way better than a paypal donate button, because >> every donor gets a signed letter from University of Washington stating >> that their contribution is tax deductible. This won't matter for >> you (since you're in England), but for people in the US it's a >> potentially big deal. >> >> -- William > > In that case have a "Donate" button on http://www.sagemath.org/ which > does the same thing - offers to make it tax-free. Also, when I had a > donate button on a web page of mine to recover the hosting fees, I > found one donation of $6, which is below the limit on your site. Other > donations for http://www.g8wrb.org/ where higher. > > PS, do you like this page > > http://www.g8wrb.org/mathematica/ :-) I definitely like the title! > > Dave > > > Dave > > -- > To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com > To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to > sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel > URL: http://www.sagemath.org > -- William Stein Professor of Mathematics University of Washington http://wstein.org -- To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org
