Re: Fund raising advertisement on the DPN (Was: [Publicity-commits] r2683 - /dpn/en/current/index.wml)
On Oct 7, 2011, at 13:19, Francesca Ciceri wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Thu, 06 Oct 2011, David Prévot wrote:
>> It's the second time [1] such an advertisement reaches the DPN, and I
>> don't find it suitable at all. I think it was a mistake the first time,
>> and it would be a shame to consider the first error as a precedent. For
>> the same reason we don't do sponsorship link in the official website
>> main page, I believe we should not relay such campaign in the official DPN.
>
> With my Publicity & Press hat on, I completely agree with David.
There are no Publicity and Press hats. I know, I asked for one at DebConf 10 when I gave the publicity talk. There were none. </facetiousness>
>
> On Fri, Oct 07, 2011 at 08:30:11AM +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
>
>>
>> I don't agree with you. It all depends on the goal of the project. Any
>> Debian-related project which has a goal to improve Debian (remember this
>> is about getting a DFSG-free Debian book) deserve a mention.
>
> Yes, sure it deserve a mention, but maybe is better to mention it when it
> will be published and not to pre-sell copies, isn't it?
What is the distinction here between selling something now and selling it later? That distinction you're trying to make is irrelevant. It costs money to publish a book and such a specialized book rarely makes a profit so is not of interest to publishers. This is why one has to work out different methods of payment to get an important Debian book published. This is likely going to be information that will appear for free in Debian _first_ so it is not an exclusive arrangement and no one in Debian will be forced to contribute money or time to this project yet they'll all reap the benefits if we have a better documented system.
> Our intent is to inform: and sure we will inform people about another
> interesting and - I bet - useful piece of documentation when it will be
> available. But DPN is not intended to advertise commercial project, as
> the publication of your book seems to be.
Did you research whether Debian news wrote about madduck's book? A cursory search provides some evidence to the contrary; http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2005/48/
So why would you want to break precedent? What is different about Raphael's book from Martin's that it doesn't deserve mention?
>
>
>> The fact that there is money involved should not be a sufficient reason
>> to refuse to cover it.
>>
>> I don't really know what you put under "sponsorship link" but we have
>> sponsorhip links at various places, and we even used to have some
>> on the main web page at the time where the web mirrors were hosted
>> by third parties.
>
> No. We *had* them: as now the web mirrors are only hosted on Debian
> machines, we have dropped them.
Oh I see. And the links on the right hand side of this page: http://debconf11.debconf.org/
are just figments of my imagination?
>
>>
>> The criteria should be the same "would this help us towards our
>> goals?". And I think this project is clearly in the "yes" side.
>>
>
> The criteria here is: if the "donate" thingie is something correlated with the
> Debian Project *officially* (as, for instance, DebConf) and the money
> will go to the Debian Project, we publish it.
I don't think you can get any more official than contributing to dpkg. You certainly do not have the right to decide as an individual what goes into the DPN and what doesn't, the DPN is a group effort and should remain so.
> If not, I'm sorry but it won't find space in our *official* Newsletter.
According to whom? Have you discussed this or is this your decree?
>
> That said, I want to add that as usual in the Debian Project, the last
> word need to be the one of people who actually do the work. For this reason,
> I consider David's and Alexander's opinion a little bit more relevant
> than the other's one.
If by the "other's one" you mean me, I think you'll find, if you bother to check, that I've contributed a good deal to the DPN as well as to Debian in general. I really don't know who it was who decided that you were the arbiter of who has a relevant opinion and who doesn't but I can say certainly that you do not hold a gatekeeper position regarding the news in DPN.
Regards,
Jeremiah
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