22 Apr
2012
22 Apr
'12
3:02 p.m.
On 04/22/2012 02:27 PM, Patrick Shirkey wrote:
I tried hard to explain the position and make it clear that it's not a
/knee jerk/ reaction.
let me try this way: the few bucks that linuxaudio.org could make via
adverstising on linuxaudio.org will - in commercial context - never be
able to pay for the services linuxaudio.org provides - and not even pay
for the administrative overhead.
If you have a viable business plan, we're all ear.
On Sun, April 22, 2012 1:52 pm, Robin Gareus wrote:
I did. 4-5 times over the last 7 years.
Most of the LAO crowd meets at the Linux Audio Conference but the
majority of the Management Board has been absent there in recent years.
[..]
On 04/22/2012 12:12 PM, Patrick Shirkey wrote:
Funny that no one brought it up until now...
On Sun, April 22, 2012 11:24 am, Robin Gareus wrote:
just take it in stride. -- Your obligation as member of the management
board is also to meet with the others at least once a year :) [ see 2.
at http://linuxaudio.org/policy ]
On 04/22/2012 11:15 AM, Patrick Shirkey wrote:
> I'm still not sure why you don't want businesses to give people round
> here
> money.
Not at all. "people 'round here" can take all the money they want from
anyone for whatever they deem fit.
but linuxaudio.org itself will have a hard time. Usually money comes
with obligations and we are in no position to handle that properly.
Maybe I am naive but I thought our obligation as a consortium was to
discuss these topics and come to a workable solution that benefits all
members. My personal
opinion aside:
I'm in favor to maintain a reasonable approach.
The freedom of the community (no user-tracking, no obligations WRT to
content posted on the site, no harassment, no discrimination, etc) takes
priority. We should _not_ be "completely anti advertising", but think
twice before adding ads or agreeing to 3rd party conditions.
We can certainly express gratitude or favor companies that support
linuxaudio.org but must be careful about maintaining independence.
It's not possible to generalize advertising campaigns, but online
marketing techniques usually come with strings attached..
Nobody complained that you put a link to _your_ site on the pages _you_
maintain on *.linuxaudio.org - but 3rd party interests - esp paid - are
questionable.
Hence the request for clarification of Policy. Instead all I get is a knee
jerk reaction and irrational prejudice. Hardly conducive to making
progress... So a policy that sets clear guidelines is completely
out of the question?
Dunno, that's a question for the management board, not me.
linuxaudio.org has no treasurer, no guidelines or infrastructure to deal
with donations or money. There are no established procedures how the
Board needs to agree and how to deal with such funds.
Besides that, a policy would need to be in accordance to the rules of
the Commonwealth of Virginia and Virginia Tech (our host). Ico has
elaborated on that in his email to you from 04/20/2012 02:57 AM CEST on
the consortium list.
From what I've learned: official policies are best
avoided and replaced
with common-sense.
Is it simply in the "Too Hard" basket?
It's in the "we're happily ignorant about it" basket :)
robin
22 Apr
22 Apr
3:45 p.m.
New subject: [LAU] poll : Advertising vs Linux Audio
On Sun, April 22, 2012 3:02 pm, Robin Gareus wrote:
And I have already put it to the board several times.
On 04/22/2012 02:27 PM, Patrick Shirkey wrote:
Perhaps it would help if a meeting time was organised and a notification
email sent out to the Consortium mailing list in advance so people could
schedule to attend in person or via tele/video conference. Pretty standard
fare for most serious business people.
On Sun, April 22, 2012 1:52 pm, Robin Gareus wrote:
I did. 4-5 times over the last 7 years.
Most of the LAO crowd meets at the Linux Audio Conference but the
majority of the Management Board has been absent there in recent years.
On 04/22/2012 12:12 PM, Patrick Shirkey wrote:
Funny that no one brought it up until now...
On Sun, April 22, 2012 11:24 am, Robin Gareus wrote:
> On 04/22/2012 11:15 AM, Patrick Shirkey wrote:
>
>> I'm still not sure why you don't want businesses to give people
>> round
>> here
>> money.
>
> Not at all. "people 'round here" can take all the money they want
> from
> anyone for whatever they deem fit.
>
> but linuxaudio.org itself will have a hard time. Usually money comes
> with obligations and we are in no position to handle that properly.
>
Maybe I am naive but I thought our obligation as a consortium was to
discuss these topics and come to a workable solution that benefits all
members.
just take it in stride. -- Your obligation as member of the management
board is also to meet with the others at least once a year :) [ see 2.
at http://linuxaudio.org/policy ]
[..]
I tried hard to explain the position and make it clear that it's not a
/knee jerk/ reaction.
let me try this way: the few bucks that linuxaudio.org could make via
adverstising on linuxaudio.org will - in commercial context - never be
able to pay for the services linuxaudio.org provides - and not even pay
for the administrative overhead.
I think you seriously underestimate the amount of money that could be
earned by accepting advertising across the LAO channel. Let alone across
the entire Linux Audio community.
My
personal opinion aside:
I'm in favor to maintain a reasonable approach.
The freedom of the community (no user-tracking, no obligations WRT to
content posted on the site, no harassment, no discrimination, etc)
takes
priority. We should _not_ be "completely anti advertising", but think
twice before adding ads or agreeing to 3rd party conditions.
We can certainly express gratitude or favor companies that support
linuxaudio.org but must be careful about maintaining independence.
It's not possible to generalize advertising campaigns, but online
marketing techniques usually come with strings attached..
Nobody complained that you put a link to _your_ site on the pages _you_
maintain on *.linuxaudio.org - but 3rd party interests - esp paid - are
questionable.
Hence the request for clarification of Policy. Instead all I get is a
knee
jerk reaction and irrational prejudice. Hardly conducive to making
progress... If you have a viable business plan, we're all
ear.
Well apparently this is a change of heart ;-)
So a policy
that sets clear guidelines is completely out of the
question?
Dunno, that's a question for the management board, not me.
linuxaudio.org has no treasurer, no guidelines or
infrastructure to deal
with donations or money. There are no established procedures how the
Board needs to agree and how to deal with such funds.
Besides that, a policy would need to be in accordance to the rules of
the Commonwealth of Virginia and Virginia Tech (our host). Ico has
elaborated on that in his email to you from 04/20/2012 02:57 AM CEST on
the consortium list.
These items have already been discussed and I provided options which would
allow us to progress.
From what I've learned: official policies are best
avoided and replaced
with common-sense.
A policy is simply a way for everyone to know what the expectations are.
If we leave it up to each one of us to guess then we will never be able to
agree on anything.
--
Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware Ltd
23 Apr
23 Apr
2:16 p.m.
New subject: [LAU] poll : Advertising vs Linux Audio
Patrick,
another long reply. please bear with me..
On 04/22/2012 03:45 PM, Patrick Shirkey wrote:
And I have already put it to the board several times.
And you got answers - most recently by the director of the linuxaudio
Management Board himself just before you approached LAU on 04/21/2012
11:29 PM CEST Ico wrote:
"... based on the majority of the consortium members the current
linuxaudio.org site will remain ad-free." [1]
http://linuxaudio.org/policy :)
Let me interpret it like this: If a sponsor support our cause:
"promote and enable the use of Linux kernel based systems for
professional audio use" - we can link to and /advertise/ for them.
A good example is your previous endeavor: http://awards.linuxaudio.org/
Commercial companies sponsor a prize for Linux-Musicians; the companies
in question also directly promote audio and/or GNU/Linux. We add a link
to and logo of those companies and the prize-money goes directly to the
musician(s). Great.
If an unrelated 3rd party wants to pay linuxaudio.org for SEO, ads or
whatever - even if we could use the money to do great things for LAO -
it's more or less a no go. -- At least for the time being.
For that to happen, linuxaudio.org would need to become a much larger
organization in order to balance commercial interest, retain its
independence and handle bureaucratic issues. It'd also require revising
the policy which can be only done by a majority decision of the
Linuxaudio.org Management Board.
On 04/22/2012 03:27 PM, Patrick Shirkey wrote:
I think you seriously underestimate the amount of
money that could be
earned by accepting advertising across the LAO channel. Let alone across
the entire Linux Audio community.
not really. I like the idea to support developers or musicians. It's
just that advertising and SEO on linuxaudio.org is not the right way to
do this. I was thinking of "business plans" in general not ads in
particular.
There were a couple of initiatives on the table a while back. e.g. merge
with and become part of the linux-foundation - similar to what
linux-printing/open-printing did. The linux-foundation has experience
with handling funding, supporting developers and properly taking care of
bureaucracy.
There's actually quite lot of linux-audio projects, devs and users that
accept donations or even make a living by selling services or products.
Yet, personally I don't have any clue how linuxaudio.org can directly
support those. IMHO the knowledge-exchange on LAD and LAU lists as well
as LA conferences, teaching newbies, etc is what linuxaudio.org does
best. It's not a business plan per se, though.
A linux-audio-record-label, sponsored music-contests, video-promos etc..
would be much more suitable for the latter. Yet someone needs to take
up that task -- I do prefer the avantgarde-like concerts featured at LAC
and that's where my time and efforts go. If someone has incentive to do
sth focused on musicians or other LA interest groups, the consortium is
usually very open to proposals and does support viable initiatives.
Keep in mind that a viable plan for the community must enable the
community to grow and not restrict them (and that includes granting
contributors the freedom to be not bothered with ads on the community
site itself - although compromises can be made as long as they're
according to LAO policy).
If you have a viable business plan, we're all
ear.
Well apparently this is a change of heart ;-) So a policy that sets clear guidelines is completely
out of the
question?
Dunno, that's a question for the management board, not me.
These items have already been discussed and I provided
options which would
allow us to progress.
No, you did not. You simply suggested move to a different [paid by ads]
host, which is not a smart idea given the infrastructure we have (see
below).
Also your way of approaching the consortium is - at best - questionable.
I think you owe Ico an apology for your offensive phrases and
questioning his authority in [2].
Also migrating content away from lau.linuxaudio.org - a domain intended
for linux-audio USERS (that you just happen to be curating) - to a .COM
domain without asking the community at large and completely deleting the
content from the linuxaudio.org server after the site has been migrated
speaks volumes.
I can completely understand that the consortium does want not continue
this discussion nor put this issue on the agenda (again).
[1] http://lists.linuxaudio.org/pipermail/consortium/2012-April/002089.html
[2] http://lists.linuxaudio.org/pipermail/consortium/2012-April/002092.html
From what
I've learned: official policies are best avoided and replaced
with common-sense.
A policy is simply a way for everyone to know what the expectations are.
If we leave it up to each one of us to guess then we will never be able to
agree on anything. Considering that most server companies are offering
500Gb to 1TB of
monthly bandwidth for less than $20/month it's hardly breaking the
bank for you to give them some space.
On average over the last year linuxaudio.org served 1.5 TBytes/month
(~35-40k unique visitors per month). The last weeks (with LAC videos)
we're currently around 4-5 TB and this month is not over, yet.
yet, bandwidth is the cheap part.
Virginia Tech currently provides linuxaudio.org with unlimited traffic,
3 hourly, 7 nightly and 4 weekly full backups of a 300GByte disk volume
(soon to be extended to 500+ GB - Ico is working on that). 2GHz
dual-core amd64 CPU, 2GB RAM on a XEN virtual system. Not to mention
24/7 support via phone, xmpp/jabber, email or skype with highly
qualified Unix/Linux personnel (e.g. they sent us customized shell
scripts to manage LVM and virtual hardware upgrades on our server. We
we can review those scripts and simply run them root. The vt tech-team
also helped us to debug XEN related kernel OOPS and pushed fixes
upstream.) All free of charge. The only requirement is that we mention
them as in the about page and/or HTML footer. - Thanks to Ico for
organizing this.
Equivalent infrastructure is more like 150-200 euro per month (numbers
from ovh.net - but their tech-support and backup-solutions are lousy
compared to vt.edu). I honestly have no idea what one would pay in the
commercial world these days for services like those provided by vt.edu.
Daniel James sponsors DNS and host-name registration ever since
linuxaudio.org was born. Kudos to him.
Sysadmin, list-moderation, web-design, wiki-despamming and general
maintenance are taken care of voluntarily by various dedicated individuals.
Aside from infrastructure, there's a lot of stuff going on that is
really hard to quantify financially. Yet I'm pretty sure voluntary
contributions and enthusiasm would drop if we have advertisements on the
site and that revenue from advertisement and SEO will not be sufficient
to replace that.
That being said, some of your initiatives (e.g label.linuxaudio.org and
awards.linuxaudio.org) are very interesting and were promising. I
suggest to focus on [reviving] those rather than pushing ads in general.
Cheers!
robin
24 Apr
24 Apr
1:46 a.m.
New subject: [LAU] poll : Advertising vs Linux Audio
On Mon, April 23, 2012 2:15 pm, Robin Gareus wrote:
And I have already put it to the board several times.
And you got answers - most recently by the director of the linuxaudio
Management Board himself just before you approached LAU on 04/21/2012
11:29 PM CEST Ico wrote:
"... based on the majority of the consortium members the current
linuxaudio.org site will remain ad-free." [1]
And I queried why it is his decision to make that call. There was not
official vote. Just a finger in the air based on a few negative answers
from a total of four people.
My suggestion was to move a couple of the subdomains specifically
lau.linuxaudio.org
quicktoots.linuxaudio.org
To a different server so that they would be able to host paid ads and
there would be no conflict with the requirements that vt.edu place on
content hosted on their own servers.
Given that Daniel maintains the dns for the domain and that is hosted on
an entirly different server again there is no conflict with the vt.edu
restrictions.
However it seems that some people feel that vt.edu now owns and controls
the linuxaudio.org domain and therefore anything to do with it is subject
to the vt.edu policy. Which I assume also includes this mailing list.
Which is strange as originally this mailing list was not setup to be at
the control of vt.edu policy and neither was the linuxaudio.org domain or
for the matter the Consortium.
IMO there is some confusion about what ICO's role as a member of VT is,
the restrictions that vt.edu place on linuxaudio.org and the role of the
consortium in regards to maintaining it's remit.
http://linuxaudio.org/policy :)
Let me interpret it like this: If a sponsor support our cause:
"promote and enable the use of Linux kernel based systems for
professional audio use" - we can link to and /advertise/ for them.
A good example is your previous endeavor: http://awards.linuxaudio.org/
Commercial companies sponsor a prize for Linux-Musicians; the companies
in question also directly promote audio and/or GNU/Linux. We add a link
to and logo of those companies and the prize-money goes directly to the
musician(s). Great.
If an unrelated 3rd party wants to pay linuxaudio.org for SEO, ads or
whatever - even if we could use the money to do great things for LAO -
it's more or less a no go. -- At least for the time being.
For that to happen, linuxaudio.org would need to become a much larger
organization in order to balance commercial interest, retain its
independence and handle bureaucratic issues. It'd also require revising
the policy which can be only done by a majority decision of the
Linuxaudio.org Management Board.
And you are opposed to that?
Patrick,
another long reply. please bear with me..
On 04/22/2012 03:45 PM, Patrick Shirkey wrote:
Which in this case doesn't actually exist hence the reason I initiated the
discussion on the consortium mailing list in the first place.
I think you seriously underestimate the amount of
money that could be
earned by accepting advertising across the LAO channel. Let alone across
the entire Linux Audio community.
not really. I like the idea to support developers or musicians. It's
just that advertising and SEO on linuxaudio.org is not the right way to
do this. I was thinking of "business plans" in general not ads in
particular.
There were a couple of initiatives on the table a while back. e.g. merge
with and become part of the linux-foundation - similar to what
linux-printing/open-printing did. The linux-foundation has experience
with handling funding, supporting developers and properly taking care of
bureaucracy.
There's actually quite lot of linux-audio projects, devs and users that
accept donations or even make a living by selling services or products.
Yet, personally I don't have any clue how linuxaudio.org can directly
support those. IMHO the knowledge-exchange on LAD and LAU lists as well
as LA conferences, teaching newbies, etc is what linuxaudio.org does
best. It's not a business plan per se, though.
A linux-audio-record-label, sponsored music-contests, video-promos etc..
would be much more suitable for the latter. Yet someone needs to take
up that task -- I do prefer the avantgarde-like concerts featured at LAC
and that's where my time and efforts go. If someone has incentive to do
sth focused on musicians or other LA interest groups, the consortium is
usually very open to proposals and does support viable initiatives.
Keep in mind that a viable plan for the community must enable the
community to grow and not restrict them (and that includes granting
contributors the freedom to be not bothered with ads on the community
site itself - although compromises can be made as long as they're
according to LAO policy).
If you have a viable business plan, we're all
ear.
Well apparently this is a change of heart ;-) So a policy
that sets clear guidelines is completely out of the
question?
Dunno, that's a question for the management board, not me.
These items
have already been discussed and I provided options which
would
allow us to progress.
No, you did not. You simply suggested move to a different [paid by ads]
host, which is not a smart idea given the infrastructure we have (see
below).
Also your way of approaching the consortium is - at
best - questionable.
I think you owe Ico an apology for your offensive phrases and
questioning his authority in [2].
Also migrating content away from lau.linuxaudio.org - a domain intended
for linux-audio USERS (that you just happen to be curating) - to a .COM
domain without asking the community at large and completely deleting the
content from the linuxaudio.org server after the site has been migrated
speaks volumes.
Considering this is not the first time that I have been subject to
barriers being placed in my way in regards to the direction of lau guide
and the quicktoots whcih are both sites I founded prior to linuxaudio.org
even existing and which I clearly stated before moving them to the still
freshly brewed portal when there were only a couple of other things going
on there I decided in my infinite wisdom that it was better to move them
somewhere that was less restricting and not subject to the policy of an
institution that should not be able to put barriers in my way.
Ico had already stated quite clearly that he though t it was appropriate
for me to redirect to the new server so I did.
I can completely understand that the consortium does
want not continue
this discussion nor put this issue on the agenda (again).
[1]
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/pipermail/consortium/2012-April/002089.html
[2]
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/pipermail/consortium/2012-April/002092.html
So irrational prejudice is considered to be an acceptable method of
forming a consensus. Is this an Academic approach to business in general?
From my experience working in the academic system over
the years that does
actually make sense.
From what I've learned: official policies are best
avoided and replaced
with common-sense.
A policy is simply a way for everyone to know what the expectations are.
If we leave it up to each one of us to guess then we will never be able
to
agree on anything.
On 04/22/2012 03:27 PM, Patrick Shirkey wrote:
No one suggested that the entire domain be moved to a new host in order to
accept third party advertising. Ever. Definitely not me. It seems there
has been some confusion or perhaps it is due to the "fog of intense
discussion"
Considering that most server companies are
offering 500Gb to 1TB of
monthly bandwidth for less than $20/month it's hardly breaking the
bank for you to give them some space.
On average over the last year linuxaudio.org served 1.5 TBytes/month
(~35-40k unique visitors per month). The last weeks (with LAC videos)
we're currently around 4-5 TB and this month is not over, yet.
yet, bandwidth is the cheap part.
That being said, some of your initiatives (e.g label.linuxaudio.org and
awards.linuxaudio.org) are very interesting and were promising. I
suggest to focus on [reviving] those rather than pushing ads in general.
Well I would love to be in a financial position where that would be
possible...
--
Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware Ltd
8:56 p.m.
New subject: poll : Advertising vs Linux Audio
Patrick,
We talk at cross-purposes.
This sort discussion style on the mailing list is not fruitful. Since
you are a member of the Mgmt board, please bring it up on the next
Consortium meeting. A common table and discussion over some beverage
seems a more appropriate way.
Since you addressed it to me, I'll answer your last question:
On 04/24/2012 01:46 AM, Patrick Shirkey wrote:
No, not in general.
However, given the available wo/manpower and state of LAO at the moment:
Yes, I am.
The long version:
There are zero full-time persons involved in linuxaudio.org. There's
maybe 0.2 persons taking care of the LAO online infrastructure (we're
less than a handful and we've all got day-time-jobs, family, a life and
other projects..). Going [semi-]commercial with no team will be disastrous.
The most active parts of LAO are the email-lists, followed by a group of
dedicated individuals who volunteer to be wiki editors and LAC
organizers - the motivation of LAO contributors and users is quite
diverse and it'd be too easy to forget where we came from.
2c,
robin
On Mon, April 23, 2012 2:15 pm, Robin Gareus wrote:
[..]
http://linuxaudio.org/policy :)
Let me interpret it like this: If a sponsor support our cause:
"promote and enable the use of Linux kernel based systems for
professional audio use" - we can link to and /advertise/ for them.
A good example is your previous endeavor: http://awards.linuxaudio.org/
Commercial companies sponsor a prize for Linux-Musicians; the companies
in question also directly promote audio and/or GNU/Linux. We add a link
to and logo of those companies and the prize-money goes directly to the
musician(s). Great.
If an unrelated 3rd party wants to pay linuxaudio.org for SEO, ads or
whatever - even if we could use the money to do great things for LAO -
it's more or less a no go. -- At least for the time being.
For that to happen, linuxaudio.org would need to become a much larger
organization in order to balance commercial interest, retain its
independence and handle bureaucratic issues. It'd also require revising
the policy which can be only done by a majority decision of the
Linuxaudio.org Management Board.
And you are opposed to that?
4385
days inactive
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days old
consortium@lists.linuxaudio.org
4 comments
2 participants
participants (2)
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