[consulting] Drupal.org advertising proposals requested

[Laura Scott]

On May 27, 2007, at 12:01 AM, The Golden Condor ! wrote:

> Using an existing ads provider is much easier
> than trying to manage ads internally. Of course, it doesn't have to be
> Google. There are several alternatives. It all boils down to who can
> provide the highest CPC (cost per click) and the highest revenue
> share.

I could not disagree more. Drupal.org has much more in its mission  
than raking in big bucks. I would hope that any decision would result  
in the strengthening of the community, not cashing in. This is a free  
open source community, not a commercial website venture. I strongly  
feel that simply going after the highest CPC (or CPM, which is  
becoming much more common because CPC is far too vulnerable to click  
fraud and advertising is not always about click-throughs) could end  
up undermining the community.

A rough analogy: We live in Boulder, on the edge of mountains.  
Everybody loves looking at the mountains. Think of all those  
eyeballs. Should Boulder sell billboard space on the mountainsides to  
cash in on all that attention? It sure would bring in a lot of cash.  
But does that make Boulder a better place, in the end? It's a rough  
analogy, to be sure, and related more directly with aesthetic beauty  
than we're talking here at d.o, but I hope it illustrates in a way  
how commercial exploitation of the Drupal commons runs the risk of  
diminishing the value of the commons.

I hope that any advertising program would somehow reinforce the  
Drupal community. Perhaps make the advertising opportunity only  
available to people and companies that have made tangible (code &  
documentation) contributions to Drupal directly. That might even have  
the effect of incentivizing larger companies like Yahoo and IBM, who  
have been working various R&D projects on Drupal but have not given  
back, afaik, to contribute their code improvements (assuming they are  
improvements) in order to have the chance to advertise with a modest  
presence.

My own feeling is that introducing advertising runs the risk of  
fracturing what has so far been a very pure do-ocracy. Drupal's  
success suggests there's something right about how things have been  
done so far. Big money hardly ever comes in without strings.

Laura

•
Laura Scott
pingVision, LLC

1350 Pine Street, Suite 1
Boulder, CO 80302
303.415.2559
http://pingv.com

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.drupal.org/pipermail/consulting/attachments/20070527/effb9715/attachment.htm