I agree with Chris' main point: non-exclusivity is essential. As for the other point about what to do with the money, there are tonnes of things that could be done: pay for hosting/bandwidth/equipment, hire people to do stuff (from coding to documentation to themes), marketing, participate in conferences, ...etc. It is apparent that several things should be in place soon: 1. Creating a non-profit Drupal foundation. None of what we are talking about can happen before that. I know this is currently on hold, but we are delaying the inevitable. Better get it sooner. It does not need to be in a country where taxes are a concern. If Belgium/Germany is not an option, then perhaps France, Canada, England or the US will do. 2. Copyright and/or trademark on the Drupal name and logo. We do not want commercial copycats taking this over. On Mar 31, 2005 6:33 PM, Chris Messina <chris.messina@gmail.com> wrote:
On Mar 31, 2005 1:54 PM, K B <kbahey@gmail.com> wrote:
On the other hand, look at this from another angle: Google sees Drupal as important. I have no idea if they made that offer to other blogging software as well or not, but that makes me feel good to be part of the Drupal community.
WordPress got the same offer. So google is going around to all the CMS' and asking them to bundle AdSense with their tarballs. Makes sense, doesn't it?
I see a couple issues though.
First, the money needs to be funneled to the Drupal Foundation -- which, to my knowledge, doesn't exist yet.
Second, we should never sign an exclusive agreement with them or anyone else. Instead, we should be able to bundle a Y! Overture module alongside AdSense and let people choose to participate.
Third, we should be careful about jumping into something that might be hard to get out of at a later date. For example, if Google does become evil, how do we remove their module from our distro? Are we bound by some kind of agreement? And how will Google be tracking the number of users that they're going to pay us for? Are there any privacy concerns?
I know that this could help Drupal move along, but we also have some leverage. I mean, if we started the Support OpenSource Advertising syndicate or something, maybe we could bundle our own ads and make more money directly. OTOH, Google already has good technology to do this for us.
I dunno, Drupal isn't special in being marketed to by Google. This AdSense deal could be a boon for Drupal or it might not be. I think Dries will make the right decision on this, but I thought I'd point out a couple other thoughts on the matter.
Chris