[Consortium] Advertising Policy - linuxaudio.org

[Patrick Shirkey]

Hi,

I appreciate your point of view but I feel it is more of a board decision
about how we handle sponsorship opportunities rather than a single persons
call.

- Being a "not for profit" organisation does not mean that we are not able
to take any cash contributions. Instead it means that we are obligated to
spend all the funding that we receive in support of our charter/mission.
Anyway at the moment we are not officially registered as not for profit so
that means we have no obligations under the "Not for Profit" laws for
funding.

Of course we don't have to take payments directly to Linuxaudio.org or the
Consortium. Both Daniel and myself have registered companies that can
legally act as proxies and deal with the accounting issues with no impact
on Linuxaudio.org. After all it is simply a website with a .org suffix
from a legal point of view. The Linux Audio Consortium is a completely
seperate entity again. There is no legal requirement for the consortium to
have any financial duties for the Linuxaudio.org domain name and/or any
content hosted under that url.

- As we already have sponsored advertising I don't see why it is a problem
to allow *some* of the subdomains to host paid advertisements. As long as
they meet the requirements of whatever policy we come up with.

I have suggested that lau.linuxaudio.org and quicktoots.linuxaudio.org be
hosted on my private server. These domains have always been about
providing a "fun" entry into the Linux Audio Community so it seems to me
they are prime places for *appropriate* paid advertising.

- I have no problem with taking payments, handling the accounting process
and distributing the cash in whichever way we determine to be the most
appropriate. Daniel and I have already established a working relationship
between Boost Hardware Ltd and 64 Studio Ltd.

- In a perfect world I would love to be able to earn enough money from the
"Linux Audio" digital channel to pay for content contributions,
development and design in addition to hosting and maintenance costs. I
think it is entirely within our charter to operate a professionally run
digital media channel for the purpose of promoting the Linux Audio
platform and open source multimedia software/hardware and businesses.

I have already established http://linuxmusicvideos.com. I am currently
looking into the costs for purchasing the linuxaudio.com domain name. The
whois for that domain is mysterious. I suspect it is already owned by one
of our members.





Cheers

--
Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware Ltd




On Thu, April 19, 2012 9:56 pm, Robin Gareus wrote:
> Hi *,
>
> Personally, I am against any commercial for-profit advertising on
> *.linuxaudio.org domain and sub-domains. I suggest to use your own
> domain-name for doing so.
>
> As Ico already pointed out: "we cannot make money off the site unless we
> move to private hosting" -- private hosting equivalent to what vt.edu
> offers us incl. unlimited traffic, 3 hourly, 7 nightly and 4 weekly full
> backups of our 300GByte volume plus 24h support is probably >= $300 per
> month. I guess Ico could find out the exact numbers, though i suppose
> it's better not to ask :)
>
> Besides, linuxaudio.org is a not-for-profit organization. As soon as we
> receive money - for any subdomain -, someone would need to spend the
> money and take care of accounting.  Daniel who pays the DNS registration
> for linuxaudio.org every year would be on top of the list to receive a
> few beers from our first revenue.
>
> best,
> robin
>
>
> PS. some lac.linuxaudio.org pages do indeed feature links to sponsors
> which and may fall under the category "advertising". However, none of
> those is for-profit. The "sponsors" are institutions or companies who
> directly support the Linux Audio Conference - mostly with non-financial
> contributions: e.g. this year: LWN ran an ad-campaign for us; Stanford
> sponsored location, coffee, Nando & Bruno's time, etc; CiTu.fr allowed
> me to co-organize LAC while being employed there,..
>
> For the record, the LAC is under the auspices of the institution that
> hosts the conference, linuxaudio.org is providing free hosting for the
> conference site to the benefit the LA community.
>
> Besides, all external links on lac.linuxaudio.org and
> wiki.linuxaudio.org are marked as rel="external" which defeats SEO to
> some extent. If you find some links on *.linuxaudio.org to commercial
> sites that are not rel="external", please let us know and I'll see to
> remove them.
>
>
> On 04/15/2012 02:36 AM, Patrick Shirkey wrote:
>> Ok,
>>
>> I'll coordinate with Daniel to get the dns for those subdomains pointing
>> at my server.
>>
>>
>> --
>> Patrick Shirkey
>> Boost Hardware Ltd
>>
>>
>> On Wed, April 11, 2012 5:23 pm, Ivica Ico Bukvic wrote:
>>> Redirecting paid things to your own server will be the easiest and
>>> fastest
>>> solution to this if you are interested in having this done quickly.
>>>
>>> HTH
>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: consortium-bounces at lists.linuxaudio.org [mailto:consortium-
>>>> bounces at lists.linuxaudio.org] On Behalf Of Patrick Shirkey
>>>> Sent: Monday, April 09, 2012 6:16 AM
>>>> To: consortium at lists.linuxaudio.org
>>>> Subject: Re: [Consortium] Advertising Policy - linuxaudio.org
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Sun, April 8, 2012 3:29 am, Ivica Ico Bukvic wrote:
>>>>> On 04/07/2012 09:16 PM, Jörn Nettingsmeier wrote:
>>>>>> On 04/08/2012 01:38 AM, Patrick Shirkey wrote:
>>>>>>> Easter Greetings to the list.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I have been contacted by a reputable audio company who would
>>>> like to
>>>>>>> sponsor the "audio quality howto" by placing an advertisement on
>>>> the
>>>>>>> page
>>>>>>> for a one year period.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> http://lau.linuxaudio.org/audio_quality_howto.htm
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Do we have an advertising policy for Linuxaudio.org?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> why would anyone want to advertise on a page that has been
>>>> bitrotting
>>>>>> for 12 years?!
>>>>>>
>>>>> Bitrotting or not, the site is hosted by a land grant university for
>>>>> free which I believe (translation: I am 99.99% sure) means we cannot
>>>>> make money off the site unless we move to private hosting. I can
>>>>> double-check with the powers that be if anyone needs a 100%
>>>> confirmation
>>>>> on this one.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> They have offered $50 for a one year placement. I'm still deciding if
>>>> that
>>>> is a fair amount.
>>>>
>>>> I am happy to host paid content on my own server if we can redirect
>>>> the
>>>> DNS to that location. I suggest that all content under the "lau" and
>>>> "quicktoots" subdomains are hosted on my server.
>>>>
>>>> That way we are able to have paid content and free (as in beer)
>>>> content so
>>>> we are Libre in the true sense of the word.
>>>>
>>>> The next step will be to figure out a policy for advertising
>>>> placements,
>>>> how to deal with any income that is generated and how far we are
>>>> prepared
>>>> to go down that path.
>>>>
>>>> Personally I would love to be able to pay people to contribute to LAO
>>>> and
>>>> if advertising in a respectful and tasteful way helps make that
>>>> possible
>>>> then I think it is a reasonable topic for discussion.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Cheers
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Patrick Shirkey
>>>> Boost Hardware Ltd
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Consortium mailing list
>>>> Consortium at lists.linuxaudio.org
>>>> http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/consortium
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Patrick Shirkey
>> Boost Hardware Ltd
>> _______________________________________________
>> Consortium mailing list
>> Consortium at lists.linuxaudio.org
>> http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/consortium
>
>


--
Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware Ltd