[LAU] poll : Advertising vs Linux Audio

[Robin Gareus]

On 04/22/2012 10:00 AM, Dan MacDonald wrote:
> Consortium mailing list??

yes, please don't top-post.

> On Sun, Apr 22, 2012 at 4:13 AM, Patrick Shirkey <pshirkey at boosthardware.com
>> wrote:
> 
>> Hi,
>>
>> Some of you may know that we are having a discussion on the Consortium
>> mailing list at the moment about the role of advertising in the Linux
>> Audio Community. Specifically the discussion is focused around the
>> possibility of having some paid ads on a *couple* of the subdomains that
>> are hosted at Linuxaudio.org.
>>
>> The views for and against appear to be very polarised. I would like to
>> know what other people who may not be monitoring the Consortium list have
>> to say about this topic.
>>
>> One camp feels that advertising is an evil blight on humanity and should
>> be avoided "where ever" possible. Although that appears to be a flexible
>> "where ever" due to having supported advertising by some supportive
>> companies in the past.
>>
>> The other camp thinks that advertising can be a useful way for the Linux
>> Audio Community to promote brands that support Linux Audio and by
>> association increase the general public awareness of the viability of
>> using Linux Audio as a business platform and another way to potentially
>> raise funds which can be used to advance the entire platform.
>>

The context:
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/pipermail/consortium/2012-April/thread.html

in short:

Someone offered Patrick (the current content maintainer of
lau.linuxaudio.org) $50 AUS for placing an advertisement on
lau.linuxaudio.org for 1 year.

A few linuxaudio.org board-members [1] who according to policy [2] can
make decisions chimed in and opposed paid advertising for various reasons:

 - bureaucratic overhead; someone needs to take care of accounting
 - hosting: our current host vt.edu does not allow advertising
 - political reasons: oppose online-marketing: person-tracking, keep
   the community safe from deceptive practices.


[1] http://linuxaudio.org/contact
[2] http://linuxaudio.org/policy


>> Do other people here have any strong opinions on the usefulness of
>> advertising in the Linux Audio community?
>>
>> Should it be avoided like the plague or does it have some value that can
>> be integrated provided we set some boundaries?
>>
>>
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> --
>> Patrick Shirkey
>> Boost Hardware Ltd


I'm not a member of the management-board; but my recommended reply to
potential commercial businesses would be: "We don't want your money, we
want your support, your cooperation and compliance. - We're happy to
link to your site if it offers useful information, specs, software or
supports linuxaudio - but we won't sell links."

2c,
robin