Boris, I wonder if you're referring to the same offer that Matt got from Google? Chris On Mar 31, 2005 8:26 AM, Boris Mann <borismann@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 16:37:38 -0500, Morbus Iff <morbus@disobey.com> wrote:

...

Regarding your other stats post, see:

http://www.waxy.org/archive/2005/03/30/wordpres.shtml

Kinda interestin' in a "wtf?" sorta way.

Pretty much everyone on the devel list should follow that link and read up. In summary: * Wordpress.org got paid to host a link farm * they used hidden link techniques to hide it off the front page * lots of people are pissed, and Google is nuking all those pages from their index

Lots of people are defending Matt (lead of WP) saying "he needed the money to make more good Wordpress stuff". Regardless of that, I think it was a bad choice -- a link farm is a link farm.

However, on the making-money-for-the-project angle....Dries, do you want to bring up the Google issue?

-- Boris Mann http://www.bryght.com

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?

I think that's a whooole different approach than the Wordpress issue. Wordpress was doing it "secretly", and in a pretty borderline-ish way (I, personally, think that this is bad, very bad, and don't agree with ANYONE supporting this approach). A Drupal implementation that: a) clearly defaults to "off". b) clearly admitted it'd help Drupal make money to offset costs c) offered the user a chance to use their ID instead of Drupal's is insanely better. It's full disclosure, fully optional, and fully modifiable by the user. You just can't go wrong with that. -- Morbus Iff ( you are nothing without your robot car, NOTHING! ) Culture: http://www.disobey.com/ and http://www.gamegrene.com/ Spidering Hacks: http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596005776/disobeycom icq: 2927491 / aim: akaMorbus / yahoo: morbus_iff / jabber.org: morbus

...

a) clearly defaults to "off". b) clearly admitted it'd help Drupal make money to offset costs c) offered the user a chance to use their ID instead of Drupal's

is insanely better. It's full disclosure, fully optional, and fully modifiable by the user. You just can't go wrong with that.

The offer was not about getting revenue from the ads displayed on the user's page, but from getting revenue just because a user displays google ads on his page. The Drupal project would get a fixed amount of money once a user enables this feature on his site (with any affiliate ID).

Ah, I see. Scratch c) then. A minor difference. -- Morbus Iff ( you are nothing without your robot car, NOTHING! ) Culture: http://www.disobey.com/ and http://www.gamegrene.com/ Spidering Hacks: http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596005776/disobeycom icq: 2927491 / aim: akaMorbus / yahoo: morbus_iff / jabber.org: morbus

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Boris Mann wrote:

* Google would like Drupal to include an AdSense.module with the drupal distribution

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but would this module be covered by the same license as the rest of Drupal, i.e. the GNU/GPL?

I think it would be a fantastic, win-win option -- lots of people that run Drupal sites struggle with enabling AdSense. Those that don't want to use it, don't have to.

As long as this module is optional and legally unencumbered I don't see why this would be a problem. The reason I ask is that I do not think I would use it, since I personally dislike advertising. I would rather support Drupal by giving my donations directly to it's contributors. Brady Jarvis -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFCTK8fO+lwfsap+f0RAnN3AJ9oLOiO2LX5zgI3r6D7t8JFXbe9YwCgoAGU V9ucQTX/MN2ysQbgYUu3kI0= =wuLf -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

On Thu, 31 Mar 2005, Dries Buytaert wrote:

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?

It would be simple enough to write an adsense.module that could be shipped with the core distribution. If a Drupal user wants to display adsense ads on their site, they merely need enable it. It could feed blocks, and whatever else makes sense. I suspect Google would work with whomever developed this as needed. I assume Drupal makes money in addition to the site that enables the adsense functionality? Is it a flat fee per "adsense subscriber", or a percentage of the ads they serve? So long as the Drupal users get to keep their earnings, then there's nothing to loose and plenty to gain. and nothing to loose. Anyone not interested in adsense never need enable way to do it, and Drupal profits to boot. -Jeremy

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