[FM Discuss] residency, and floss for $

[adam hyde]

hey

There are two things I wanted to bring up on the list.

I just got back from a trip to Korcula
(http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=korcula) which was pretty amazing. Its
an ancient village on the Adriatic (Croatian). It has the reputation for
having the best olive oil in Croatia - I am not sure if it is the best,
but its pretty damn good!

The owner of the apartment I stayed in (in the middle of Korcula old
city) has offered some generous support for FLOSS Manuals. Essentially
he will let FM rent it cheap for FLOSS Manuals writers residencies. I'm
flagging this up on the list to let you know this is happening. There is
no formal procedure for dealing with the residency, actually its all
rather informal as the owner is a friend and is doing me a favour as
much as anything else. So I have (informally) offered this to Derek for
a month in Jan (FM would pay the rent for him) next year so he can enjoy
Korcula and focus on the PureData manual. Derek will decide on the
possibility when he has sorted some other stuff out. If he decides hes
not able to do it then we can talk about someone else possibly having
it. It would have to be to someone I know as I am sure you can
appreciate, I wish it could be more open but I need to ensure whoever
goes is someone I can vouch for personally.

So, thats that 'announcement'. Next, I wanted to bring up an issue about
payment for content. I am currently writing a financial sustainability
plan for FM. I like the term 'financial sustanability plan' but its
really a business plan. I just like to avoid the term 'business' as FM
is a not-for-profit. 

FM relies, and will increasingly be reliant, on voluntary contributions.
A number of contributers have been paid to get the manuals off the
ground. There haven't been large payments by any means, and without
exception what has been delivered is well above what was requested.
These initial payments have kick started certain manuals which will be
built on over time by volunteers. We have also paid for some programming
and design work. Again, we have paid less than I would have liked and I
am grateful for those that delivered more than was asked. I have also
received some (small) payment for the work I have done on FM, but
currently I am working fulltime voluntarily on it.

I am bringing this up because I want to point out early on that FM,
while encouraging voluntary work, will endeavour to find methods for
people to make some money for contributing. I think this is important. I
don't like the 'user generated content' strategies (eg youtube/flickr)
where 'users' contribute a lot of content but don't see a dime while a
handful of San Jose residents make millions. I also have problems with
the Wikipedia strict voluntarism code that no one ought to be paid. 

I think at the end of the day we have to eat and pay the rent, and if
possible enjoy ourselves ;) To do this we all need money. I don't think
its unreasonable that we could imagine FM supporting voluntary
contributions while at the same time trying to find ways that some
contributers might get paid.

I am not exactly sure how this will work, but there are several
possbilities I am now thinking about and I would like to invite your
comments. 

The first is that I am looking at (through the business plan) Book
Bounties. This would mean finding a book topic and having a call for
content. This call would be open to anyone, anywhere, to contribute.
Contributions to the 'final' version of the proposed book (remembering
that all FM content is able to be edited and modified at any time) will
be collated and paid. The money for this would possibly come from a
sponsor, and we would need to be very tight and clear about what a
sponsor might expect in return in this situation. We would also have to
think carefully about how this would sit with the current content. I
have some thoughts about this, and I am happy to elaborate if anyone is
interested.

Secondly, it might be that FM could set up a kind of 'writers market'.
This would mean NGOs or schools, or whoever that wanted documentation
could post to a 'market' notice board what they want and how much they
would pay for it. Writers could then put their name forward for
consideration. It would mean FM would act as a trading place between
free documentation writers and those that had some money to pay for
content. 

Lastly, if writers can by themselves find commissioners to pay them to
write for FM (or translate) then all power to them. This kind of model
is how many open source software projects have become the mature
projects they are. 

These are just three ideas at present. I wanted to bring them up because
I think its important before we get too far down the road to be clear
about FMs position regarding voluntary work and paid work. I see
voluntary work as the norm for FM, but I also want paid work to be
accepted. I can see in very mature open source projects that this has
become a problem perhaps because it was not discussed early one. The
Apache Software Foundation (Apache being one of the biggest open source
software projects there is) has had big issues trying to pay people
because the norm has always been that work is voluntary. I think
Wikipedia may have some issue, but perhaps some of those with more
experience with Wikipedia could comment on this.

So, I hope these comments are food for thought and we might have an
interesting discussion about the ideas involved.

:)

adam





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adam hyde
floss manuals

free manuals for free software
http://www.flossmanuals.net

mobile : + 31 6 154 22770 (Netherlands mobile)
email : adam at flossmanuals.net