Re: [drupal-devel] some drupal stats
Dries, Let me be among the first to respond to this. I personally do not mind it, if it makes money for the Drupal Foundation non-profit organization (you are registering it soon, right? :-), AND that it is ethically acceptable. By ethically acceptable, I mean that it is completely disclosed to all developers and users of Drupal, and that it is not mandatory (users can disable it if they want). No sneaky business like the .css trick used by Wordpress, or a link farm, ...etc. I am not sure what they exactly mean by "integrate AdSense support into Drupal". Do they just want us to make the Drupal default page for the admin to has a link to signup for Adsense? A standard block for Adsense? As long as it is fully disclosed and can be disabled, I do not see anything wrong with a voluntary referral program, since this is effectively what it is. 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. --- Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2005 22:51:51 +0200 From: Dries Buytaert <dries@buytaert.net> Subject: Re: [drupal-devel] some drupal stats To: drupal-devel@drupal.org, boris@bmannconsulting.com Message-ID: <d6c69f7c34744dad259733d3bffb771d@buytaert.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
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?
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
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
By ethically acceptable, I mean that it is completely disclosed to all developers and users of Drupal, and that it is not mandatory (users can disable it if they want). No sneaky business like the .css trick used by Wordpress, or a link farm, ...etc.
I am not sure what they exactly mean by "integrate AdSense support into Drupal". Do they just want us to make the Drupal default page for the admin to has a link to signup for Adsense? A standard block for Adsense?
As long as it is fully disclosed and can be disabled, I do not see anything wrong with a voluntary referral program, since this is effectively what it is.
Nobody thought about it that Drupal would use any non-transparent methods to introduce this, or at least I would never suspect that, from how much I know the guys and girls here. Goba
I did not think anyone here would accept it either. I was mainly saying that even if some outside party asks us to do so (as in the case of Wordpress), we should not accept it.
Nobody thought about it that Drupal would use any non-transparent methods to introduce this, or at least I would never suspect that, from how much I know the guys and girls here.
FYI, Matt's posted a response about the linkfarm issue. http://photomatt.net/2005/04/01/a-response/ Chris On Apr 1, 2005 12:31 PM, K B <kbahey@gmail.com> wrote:
I did not think anyone here would accept it either. I was mainly saying that even if some outside party asks us to do so (as in the case of Wordpress), we should not accept it.
Nobody thought about it that Drupal would use any non-transparent methods to introduce this, or at least I would never suspect that, from how much I know the guys and girls here.
participants (3)
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Chris Messina -
Gabor Hojtsy -
K B