linuxaudio.org

On 04/21/2012 02:53 AM, Patrick Shirkey wrote:

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>

> On Fri, April 20, 2012 11:21 pm, Jörn Nettingsmeier wrote:

>> if i may:

>>

>>

>> i share ico's sentiments expressed earlier in this thread, and also

>> aymeric's wrt to advertising on the net.

+1
> Do you dislike all advertising or just advertising that is on the web?
/me dislikes all advertisements. They're evil, deception, brainwash,

corruption,..
If I want to find information, I go ask for it; I don't want it pushed

on me by the one who pays most.
Belgium and France have recently banned public commercial ads with the

reasoning that a person has the right to roam the public space free of

[commercial] interest. IOW Everyone must have "equal freedom of opinion

and speech" regardless of funding. The only ads currently remaining in

Paris are for cultural benefit (cinema, exhibitions, TV, language

classes, telco and - of course in France - wine, food & cognac :)

In Paris audience-counting-devices are banned by law and illuminated

advertising of all forms is restricted. This makes the city a much nicer

place!
I hope other countries will follow, and I do oppose public community

sites - such as linuxaudio.org - with ads.
[..]

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>> let's not go there. the whole thing is a bureaucratic nightmare and the

>> prospective gains are in no relation to the pain.

>

> What is the pain exactly?

Bureaucratic overhead.
[..]

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> SEO is simply a way to increase page ranking. It is a perfectly legitimate

> business practice 

There are a lot of perfectly legitimate business practices that I deem

to be immoral or unjust and those should not be encouraged or supported.
..another drop in the ocean.
> I don't see how advertising on *some of the subdomains/content* that we

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> host is going to ruin our reputation.

IMHO it's not about reputation. It's about the ideals and standards that

we want for the LA community. The message to companies should be:
"We don't want your money, we want your support, your cooperation and

compliance. - We're happy to link to your site - esp. if it offers

useful information, specs or software - but we won't sell links."
> Considering the state of the economy and that there are several people in

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> the community that we could potentially help make ends meet if we had a

> regular flow of income to keep them motivated I think it is a callous

> disregard for our potential as a community focused organisation if we

> restrict ourselves to the high ground and expect people to do everything

> for the love of it.

Love and enthusiasm is the basis for any successful project, commercial

or not. I also seriously doubt that we could even pay half a full-time

developer with advertisement campaigns: our ~35k unique visitors per

month don't wag the tail of any industry.
http://stats.linuxaudio.org/cgi-bin/awstats.pl?config=total
There are quite a few LAO developers who manage to get a steady income

with linux audio -- linuxaudio.org however is a x-project community

portal. The knowledge exchanged on LAO is worth a lot more than

advertising could pay for.
> By the way I don't see anyone complaining when companies like Ableton

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> sponsor events like the LAC and plaster their name everywhere.

As I said before, the support was for the institution that hosts LAC,

not linuxaudio.org itself. In case of LAC, linuxaudio.org provides

hosting for the event which has always been under the auspices of

someone else. In most cases the commercial support was also made by

contributing equipment, bandwidth, etc and was very rarely a monetary

contribution.
nitpicking: the contributions were are also _not for advertising_, but

for _supporting the conference_. - From the contacts that I know they

were paid using HR and/or Support budget - not advertisement-budget - of

the companies in question.
> If anything

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> people were very happy with that association and have even gone so far as

> to publish the keynote from the director of Ableton explaining why he

> *will never support* a Linux version of Ableton Live.

[citation needed]
I'm curious. I've been at LAC'07 and while I remember a panel

discussion, I don't recall a keynote with that message.
Anyway why is this bad? It's good to know the POV of others - especially

if you do not agree with them.
> We have a clear track record of allowing advertising and taking money 
Certainly not. If anything: we take specs, bandwidth and time as

donations and thank by mentioning the donor.
> Especially if these pages are

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> considered old and unuseful which clearly is wrong if we expand the

> allowable uses for content hosted under the LAO domain.

I disagree. It'd be a step backwards.

In a commercial context, you'd need to shell out at least 500-5000 times

the money per year of what you have been offered so far to even come

close to what we currently have.
2 cents,

robin

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