[drupal-devel] some drupal stats

[K B]

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 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mar 31, 2005 1:54 PM, K B <kbahey at 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
>