Re: Banner ads

[Poet/Joshua Drake <poet@linuxports.com>]

Hello,

Well now that you have gotten that out of your system. 

Some simple points:

Please read my other posts regarding this.

There are a few people that have made mention of the banner. We have
explained to them the situation, the details behind it, and the decision
to NOT do it again, at that they left it alone.

Also, speaking of mutiny does nothing but fan flames that have died down.
Why is it that someone who obviously has not viewed the web page in at
least a month decides to bring all this up after it has been raked over
the coals, dragged through compost, and soiled beyond any recognition
already?

Do we need a logo? Of course not, it was a marketing ploy to get people to
come to the website and either: 

A. Discover the LDP
B. Re-discover the LDP
C. Provide something cool for a linux project.

You know what? It worked. We have people all over the place now asking how
they can contribute, if they can contribute, and new documents, changes
and updates to old documents almost weekly. We even won an award from a
very cool website.

Now is this all because of the Logo Contest? Again, of course not, some of
it is publicity of the OSWG, some of it is banners from linux.com, some of
it is members actively seeking other members, some of it, is just the
appearance of activity. 

The whole point of this is that there is no way to make everyone happy.
That has been tried and failed. Some people are going to be happy, some
pissed, some neutral. That, is life, but in that outside of some fringers
even the pissed people continue to contribute, understanding the very
premise of this paragraph and I seriously doubt that a mutiny is coming.

Even of those that read this letter and get pissed off, it will be a small
majority, a vocal majority yes, but a small majority of the people
actually involved with the LDP.

Have a lovely weekend.

Joshua Drake




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On 23 Oct 1999, Jim Pick wrote:

> Poet/Joshua Drake <poet@linuxports.com> writes:
> 
> > Hello,
> > 
> > This has already been gone over and the banner will be removed once the
> > agreement has ended.
> 
> Let me get this right...
> 
> Somehow, "we" have entered into a contractual obligation to run a
> banner ad?
> 
> Ugh.
> 
> Now I'm going to get nasty...
> 
> Generally speaking, it's a bad thing when volunteer projects with
> little or no management heirarchy start getting involved in
> "agreements" and "obligations".  Even a substantial project like
> Debian tends to shy away from doing stuff like that.  That's part of
> the reason they've been successful.
> 
> There have been quite a few volunteer organizations that I have seen
> that have lost all their support and died because the "core team" (or
> whatever they call themselves) starts making deals on the side without
> support from the base membership.
> 
> > After which point there will be no banners at the top
> > of the page, or probably any where else for that matter. Any banners that
> > would be placed would be for other open source projects, similar to the
> > way linux.com does it and THAT is only if it is approved.
> 
> No banner ads is what I want.
>  
> > The banner will be removed on DEC-15,1999.
> 
> December 15th !?!
> 
> That's ridiculous.
> 
> Call them up and renegotiate the agreement.  Tell them that you're
> going to have a mutiny on your hands if you don't.
> 
> > By the way, you are probably right, they don't deserve the amount of
> > exposure that they are getting, but because of their sponsorship we
> > actually have received some GOOD entries to the logo contest. Previous to
> > that we didn't get squat.
> > 
> > In regards to the design, it is temporary and will be chaning drastically
> > once the new logo is decided upon.
> 
> I'm not even sure what we need a logo for in the first place.
> 
> Our "need" for a logo does not come anywhere close to the justifying
> the mess that is now on the home page.
> 
> If you poll the list of people that have contributed to the LDP, I
> think you'll find that most of them *hate* the banner ad.  Same goes
> for the Linux community at large.
> 
> This reflects badly on the people involved in the project, and the
> "core team" especially.  I suspect that a large percentage of the
> former contributors to the project are a little bit disgruntled.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
>  - Jim
> 


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