Dries Buytaert wrote:
However, on the making-money-for-the-project angle....Dries, do you want to bring up the Google issue?
I don't have the details at hand here so I'd rather bring it up when I'm back in Belgium. Unfortunately, I guess that is too late now. In short: we got an offer from Google to integrate AdSense support into Drupal. For each Drupal user that signs up with Google and enables Google Ads on his or her Drupal site, we would get money from Google. Clearly, this is a great opportunity to generate some money. However, the question arises: do we want to go there, and if so, how?
In principle, I don't mind this idea. However, when you start talking about generating (significant?) revenue, I have to ask a few questions: What expenses does the Drupal project have? What new activities would the project pursue if it had an extra $500 at hand? $5,000? $50,000? Or, put another way, is there a clear point beyond which the organization will not benefit from additional revenue? What is the plan for handling "excess" revenue (e.g. donate to other non-profit orgs, hire consultants to address tricky/unpopular parts of the code?)? How can I as a potential supporter of the Drupal cause see that there is accountability for whatever revenues are placed in the Drupal collection jar (by whatever means: direct donations, or indirect compensation through Google)? I'm not at all excited by the concept of generating money for the sake of generating money. But if I can see that the Drupal project will do X (and I think X is a legitimate activity for Drupal project) with the first $1,000 it generates, I'll be happy to see that happen, and do what I can to help it happen. IMHO, this information needs to be available to the public before before you agree to accept the revenue. -Eric