[FM Discuss] books and fm - need your thoughts!

[adam hyde]

So,

After reading the posts and thinking about it alot, I am wondering if we
might consider the following :

* we set up a FM book store
* books are always sold at cost with an optional version available at a
mark-up. This 'profit' is then actually a conscious donation by the
purchaser towards the maintenance of the manual
* any profit on a per-manual basis goes towards the maintenance of that
specific manual 
* how any $ is spent is best worked out by either the maintainers and
contributors for that manual or just by the maintainers. Decisions are
by rough consensus. Part of this decision _might_ be to decide to
include a donation to FM.


And of course, if you want to take a manual, use Objavi, and sell it for
a huge mark-up, you are free to do so.

thoughts?

adam








On Tue, 2008-07-29 at 22:33 -0500, Joshua Facemyer wrote:
> Seth Woodworth wrote:
> > This is a potentially very dangerous question.  There is a history of 
> > issues being caused between profit-making and pure-volunteers in a 
> > massive volunteering project.  I'm not saying that it's an 
> > insurmountable problem, but just potentially issue-causing.
> Yes, this is exactly why I think that many teams will want to put money 
> back into their software projects or booksprints, etc.  I think it's 
> best left up to the maintainers to do what's best for the team, and if 
> there are complaints they can be made to Adam (for now, until we FM has 
> a goliath board of directors for its monstrosity of operations ;) who 
> can arbitrate.  But at the outset, it should be made known to all 
> contributors who the maintainers are, what responsibilities  and rights 
> they have, etc, and that monies collected will be dispursed as they see 
> fit.  That way it should mostly be a team issue and not an FM issue.
> > My suggestion is to do #3, and ultimately to provide tools, widgets 
> > and other support for other retailers.  And *ideally* we would work to 
> > find a single benevolent dictator of a retailer that would give money 
> > back on a case-to-case basis.
> I really don't like this idea at all, since it gives much control away - 
> I want to be able to do with my manual that I wrote exactly what I want, 
> and if there's someone else heavily involved in that process whose only 
> goal is to make a profit, I think it is contrary to what FM really is.  
> That's not to say profit-desiring people shouldn't sell the books, but 
> to channel all goods sold (and sales decisions made) through them is, 
> IMO, a Bad Idea (TM).  Middle-men also mean less profit directly, though 
> there is the potential that more sales means more profit.  However, I 
> think there's always going to be minimal sales of free software manuals 
> so that there is not much benefit to having middle men.
> 
> And this also circumvents the problem of self-sufficiency of FM and 
> recompense for Adam's work (as well as others, such as Aco).  Since Adam 
> will probably not include consideration of himself directly without a 
> lot of prompting (he's just a little self-deprecating like that), I'll 
> keep at it until the discussion and real consideration of this necessity 
> is made.
> > Another interesting consideration is that I'm getting paid 
> > (hypothetically) for organizing work on the OLPC manual, and I am 
> > technically the final responsibility on the project but Anne is very 
> > much the one who has the most edits so far.
> I don't think there's any realistic way to approach dividing profits 
> fairly among people based on statistics.  That's why I think that most 
> larger groups (more than 3 or 4 people) would probably choose to 
> contribute earnings to the team or the software project.  However, since 
> all projects and teams will be unique, that's why I think the decision 
> should ultimately be up to the maintainers, with all contributors 
> agreeing to this before they contribute.  Maybe it could be an agreement 
> clause, though that might also not be in the spirit of FM...but it may 
> be necessary.
> > It's a complicated question.
> Indeed =)
> 
> JF
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-- 
Adam Hyde
FLOSS Manuals

http://www.flossmanuals.net
+ 31 6 2808 7108
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