Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo
On 03/27/2012 10:39 AM, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> On 12-03-27 at 10:26am, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
>> Dear Project Members,
>> thanks to the introductions by Mike Hommey, as Iceweasel maintainer,
>> I've been approached by a representative of the DuckDuckGo (DDG) search
>> engine [1] about a revenue sharing agreement among them and the Debian
>> Project.
>>
>> [1] https://duckduckgo.com/
[..]
>> I welcome feedback on this matter,
> Sorry if it is just me: What is our end of the agreement - apart from
> being ok accepting money from them?
>
> Thanks for your work on this,
For the sake of consistency Iit may be preferable to work towards having
them listed as a partner and they just donate and announce whatever they
want to donate.
But I truly wish we'd have several of such sites through which Debian
gets some money. This could be the typical online bookshop or anything
else like me getting tires for my car. The problem I see is with a
competition with upstream. If we in any way lower the impact firefox
has for google, then this has a direct effect not only on firefox but
also on our relation with them and other upstreams.
At the moment we are perceived as enthusiasts serving upstream
developers with the best possible presentation of their work. Once we
start getting money through their tools, they may possibly start
thinking differently. This is not necessarily a bad change of thought,
but it is different. Thinking it all further, should we for instance
have some user-configurable optional android-like ads shown in
applications? This would be simple to code and Debian could earn a lot
with this. We would not want that, right? Would we? Or do we have the
obligation to come up with an option for something more commercial to
feed not us but the upstream developers?
Best,
Steffen
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