[gentoo-trustees] Advertisement requests

[gentoo-trustees] Advertisement requests

[Sven Vermeulen]

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Hi all

As you have noticed, Gentoo frequently (almost on a weekly basis iirc)
receives requests for advertisement space on the Gentoo website. Until now,
all such requests to www@gentoo.org have been answered like so:

  We are currently not looking for additional revenues through
  advertisements.
  The advertisements you find on our webpage are donated to the respective
  companies as a thank you or trade for their continuous support to the
  Gentoo project (hardware donations, bandwidth, ...).

Some requests however propose a continuous support to the Gentoo project. 

My personal opinion has always been to decrease the advertisements on the
Gentoo website itself and make the Sponsors [1] page more accurate with the
current sponsoring (the page is currently a bit outdated).

To facilitate the maintenance of the Sponsors page I have started
documenting the current sponsoring (who sponsors what). Based on this
(hopefully to become) complete information I would draft a guideline what we
see as a Sponsor.

Others would be then called "Contributors". Currently contributors are not
shown on the Gentoo website since many contributions happen through PayPal
donations. Would it be feasible to have all PayPal contributions (and
others) listed automatically somewhere (like in KDE's donations page [2])?

If so, we might want to put up such a "Contributions" page on which not only
PayPal contributions but also other, non-Sponsoring contributions are
listed.

In short, my questions are:
- Do we find it feasible to have a contributions page?
- Should be decrease (or even nullify) the advertisements on the Gentoo
  website (and therefore denying all advertisement requests)?

Wkr,
      Sven Vermeulen

[1] http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/sponsors.xml
[2] http://www.kde.org/support/donations.php

-- 
  Documentation project leader - Gentoo Foundation Trustee

  The Gentoo Project   <<< http://www.gentoo.org >>>

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Re: [gentoo-trustees] Advertisement requests

[Kurt Lieber]

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On Sun, May 22, 2005 at 01:52:16PM +0200 or thereabouts, Sven Vermeulen wrote:
> - Should be decrease (or even nullify) the advertisements on the Gentoo
>   website (and therefore denying all advertisement requests)?

We can certainly reduce the amount of advertisements on the home page, but
we will probably need to keep some around, at least for the near future.
While we have a lot of infrastructure and bandwidth provided by OSU and IU,
it's still important to have at least a couple of other geographic
locations where we can house a server or two.  Those servers, along with
their bandwidth and M&E costs, have typically been paid for through the
advertisements on our front page.

--kurt

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Re: [gentoo-trustees] Advertisement requests

[Corey Shields]

On Sunday 22 May 2005 04:52 am, Sven Vermeulen wrote:
<snip>
> My personal opinion has always been to decrease the advertisements on the
> Gentoo website itself and make the Sponsors [1] page more accurate with the
> current sponsoring (the page is currently a bit outdated).

I agree..  I've said for quite a while now that we should a) take away the 
text under the ads, since for the most part it just reiterates what the ads 
say, and b) figure out a way to randomly rotate their order...   While I 
don't mind the ads, I think fewer is better than more..

> To facilitate the maintenance of the Sponsors page I have started
> documenting the current sponsoring (who sponsors what). Based on this
> (hopefully to become) complete information I would draft a guideline what
> we see as a Sponsor.

Sweet!  When you get around to the OSL part, can you change the logo to:

http://osuosl.org/about/copy_of_logos/osl_logo/variant/medium

> Others would be then called "Contributors". Currently contributors are not
> shown on the Gentoo website since many contributions happen through PayPal
> donations. Would it be feasible to have all PayPal contributions (and
> others) listed automatically somewhere (like in KDE's donations page [2])?

I like the idea, but it could get tricky.. First of all I wouldn't want to 
post anyone's name without their prior permission, some people might not want 
to be listed to avoid other people/projects taking the list and begging them 
for donations.  (the guy who donated $1,000 needs a freakin GWN article)  :)

> If so, we might want to put up such a "Contributions" page on which not
> only PayPal contributions but also other, non-Sponsoring contributions are
> listed.
>
> In short, my questions are:
> - Do we find it feasible to have a contributions page?

well, I guess I am still a bit confused as to where the line is drawn between 
sponsor and contributor.

> - Should be decrease (or even nullify) the advertisements on the Gentoo
>   website (and therefore denying all advertisement requests)?

I don't know what our unofficial agreements are with these groups, but I think 
some of them are giving us hosting in return for the adspace.  Lance has been 
working with some of them lately, I'll let him answer that.

Cheers!
-- 
Corey Shields
Gentoo Linux Infrastructure Team and Devrel Team
Gentoo Foundation Board of Trustees
http://www.gentoo.org/~cshields
-- 
gentoo-trustees@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-trustees] Advertisement requests

[Lance Albertson]

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On Sun, 2005-05-22 at 09:12 -0700, Corey Shields wrote:
> On Sunday 22 May 2005 04:52 am, Sven Vermeulen wrote:
> <snip>
> > My personal opinion has always been to decrease the advertisements on the
> > Gentoo website itself and make the Sponsors [1] page more accurate with the
> > current sponsoring (the page is currently a bit outdated).
> 
> I agree..  I've said for quite a while now that we should a) take away the 
> text under the ads, since for the most part it just reiterates what the ads 
> say, and b) figure out a way to randomly rotate their order...   While I 
> don't mind the ads, I think fewer is better than more..

Right now I'd like to at least keep the ads for folks providing us
hosting and bandwidth as these ads have definately helped them pay for
our costs and potentially adding more hardware/bandwidth to use. One
example is that Sevenl.net should be hopefully moving to a 100Mbit
connection, and much of it is thanks to our ad giving them more
exposure. They (and the other sponsors) have been very kind in trying to
provide the best service possible. I'd very much to at least keep the
image ads up for those folks. I'd like to also suggest that any ad we
place needs to be a non-animated type. Its very annoying trying to read
a howto doc with something flashing at you.

Swift: we can do a random order thing easily can we? If not, lets just
try and change the order every 2-3 months to keep things fair for all
sponsors.

> > To facilitate the maintenance of the Sponsors page I have started
> > documenting the current sponsoring (who sponsors what). Based on this
> > (hopefully to become) complete information I would draft a guideline what
> > we see as a Sponsor.
> 
> Sweet!  When you get around to the OSL part, can you change the logo to:
> 
> http://osuosl.org/about/copy_of_logos/osl_logo/variant/medium
> 
> > Others would be then called "Contributors". Currently contributors are not
> > shown on the Gentoo website since many contributions happen through PayPal
> > donations. Would it be feasible to have all PayPal contributions (and
> > others) listed automatically somewhere (like in KDE's donations page [2])?
> 
> I like the idea, but it could get tricky.. First of all I wouldn't want to 
> post anyone's name without their prior permission, some people might not want 
> to be listed to avoid other people/projects taking the list and begging them 
> for donations.  (the guy who donated $1,000 needs a freakin GWN article)  :)
> 
> > If so, we might want to put up such a "Contributions" page on which not
> > only PayPal contributions but also other, non-Sponsoring contributions are
> > listed.
> >
> > In short, my questions are:
> > - Do we find it feasible to have a contributions page?
> 
> well, I guess I am still a bit confused as to where the line is drawn between 
> sponsor and contributor.

Me too, how do we define it? To me a sponsor provides us with a
continuing influx of either hardware/bandwidth/funding. Examples of
which are vr.org, sevenl.net, AMD, etc.

> > - Should be decrease (or even nullify) the advertisements on the Gentoo
> >   website (and therefore denying all advertisement requests)?
> 
> I don't know what our unofficial agreements are with these groups, but I think 
> some of them are giving us hosting in return for the adspace.  Lance has been 
> working with some of them lately, I'll let him answer that.

As stated above, I'd like the only advertisments that are on the site to
be ones that help our hardware/bandwidth providers pay for our end of
the costs. Its a small price for us to pay just to include the ad and
its well worth it. All these groups have great people behind them and
I'd hate to piss any of them off just to clean our site from ads. 

Since the store will be going away soon, I'd like to suggest we take the
ad for the store off after tomorrow and take the other links on the site
until we get the other store corey is working on online totally. (Of
course, if corey feels its ok to start, thats his call).

Daniel: this was the thing you were ok with, right? (You wanted
store.g.o to still work for customer service issues for a month, but
didn't mind us taking the links off). Just wanted to confirm this from
you.

While we're talking about ads, I was just in the process of updating the
ads on the site with new images from the sponsors. I'll post a bug #
once I get that going so we can track any changes. 

-- 
Lance Albertson <ramereth@gentoo.org>
Gentoo Infrastructure | Operations Manager

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Re: [gentoo-trustees] Advertisement requests

[Corey Shields]

On Sunday 22 May 2005 09:27 am, Lance Albertson wrote:
> Since the store will be going away soon, I'd like to suggest we take the
> ad for the store off after tomorrow and take the other links on the site
> until we get the other store corey is working on online totally. (Of
> course, if corey feels its ok to start, thats his call).

The CP store is all ready to go minus CD releases (there is a note that they 
will be coming soon).  I can ship out "master cds" tomorrow so we could add 
the cd offerings in about a week.  Until then we have merchandise with the 
Gentoo logo/name all ready to go.  I'd like to get more of a variety up there 
(variety in logo, slogans, etc...), so any ideas???

You know, Have the gentoo logo on the front of the T-shirt, and the back says 
"-funroll-loops, I'm s00 l447!!"

(just kidding, but you get the point)

-- 
Corey Shields
Gentoo Linux Infrastructure Team and Devrel Team
Gentoo Foundation Board of Trustees
http://www.gentoo.org/~cshields
-- 
gentoo-trustees@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-trustees] Advertisement requests

[Sven Vermeulen]

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On Sun, May 22, 2005 at 04:09:58PM +0000, Kurt Lieber wrote:
> We can certainly reduce the amount of advertisements on the home page, but
> we will probably need to keep some around, at least for the near future.
> While we have a lot of infrastructure and bandwidth provided by OSU and IU,
> it's still important to have at least a couple of other geographic
> locations where we can house a server or two.  Those servers, along with
> their bandwidth and M&E costs, have typically been paid for through the
> advertisements on our front page.

On Sun, May 22, 2005 at 11:27:17AM -0500, Lance Albertson wrote:
> Right now I'd like to at least keep the ads for folks providing us
> hosting and bandwidth as these ads have definately helped them pay for
> our costs and potentially adding more hardware/bandwidth to use. One
> example is that Sevenl.net should be hopefully moving to a 100Mbit
> connection, and much of it is thanks to our ad giving them more
> exposure.


Okay, I can totally understand this. Now what if some hosting company is
proposing to host Gentoo infrastructure or provide bandwidth for us, when is
it eligible to be forwarded to the infrastructure project and Foundation?

For instance, do we have a place where our current "needs" are displayed or
where I can find some numbers that I can show to the prospects so they can
see what we are really looking for (what bandwidth and such)?

Because frankly, someone who wants an advertisement because he is able to
host Gentoo boxes on a shared 1 Mbps line is probably not to be taken into
account.

Wkr,
      Sven Vermeulen


-- 
  Documentation project leader - Gentoo Foundation Trustee

  The Gentoo Project   <<< http://www.gentoo.org >>>

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Re: [gentoo-trustees] Advertisement requests

[Lance Albertson]

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On Sun, 2005-05-22 at 19:33 +0200, Sven Vermeulen wrote:
> On Sun, May 22, 2005 at 04:09:58PM +0000, Kurt Lieber wrote:
> > We can certainly reduce the amount of advertisements on the home page, but
> > we will probably need to keep some around, at least for the near future.
> > While we have a lot of infrastructure and bandwidth provided by OSU and IU,
> > it's still important to have at least a couple of other geographic
> > locations where we can house a server or two.  Those servers, along with
> > their bandwidth and M&E costs, have typically been paid for through the
> > advertisements on our front page.
> 
> On Sun, May 22, 2005 at 11:27:17AM -0500, Lance Albertson wrote:
> > Right now I'd like to at least keep the ads for folks providing us
> > hosting and bandwidth as these ads have definately helped them pay for
> > our costs and potentially adding more hardware/bandwidth to use. One
> > example is that Sevenl.net should be hopefully moving to a 100Mbit
> > connection, and much of it is thanks to our ad giving them more
> > exposure.
> 
> 
> Okay, I can totally understand this. Now what if some hosting company is
> proposing to host Gentoo infrastructure or provide bandwidth for us, when is
> it eligible to be forwarded to the infrastructure project and Foundation?
> 
> For instance, do we have a place where our current "needs" are displayed or
> where I can find some numbers that I can show to the prospects so they can
> see what we are really looking for (what bandwidth and such)?
> 
> Because frankly, someone who wants an advertisement because he is able to
> host Gentoo boxes on a shared 1 Mbps line is probably not to be taken into
> account.

Hrm, This is true. I thought there was something on the sponsors [1]
page about this, but apparently not. Make a bug and assign it to me and
I'll see about making an addition to that page that has requirements and
some guidelines for it. Generally in the past, someone would email
either me or Kurt about providing such hardware. If we felt that we
needed it and could use, then we would go on from there. If they asked
to have some kind of ad on our page, we would only do that depending on
the level of things they offered to us. i.e. - if they provided a bunch
of bandwidth/hardware/support, they would definately get exposure on our
main page.

[1] http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/sponsors.xml

-- 
Lance Albertson <ramereth@gentoo.org>
Gentoo Infrastructure | Operations Manager

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Re: [gentoo-trustees] Advertisement requests

[Lance Albertson]

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On Sun, 2005-05-22 at 11:27 -0500, Lance Albertson wrote:

> While we're talking about ads, I was just in the process of updating the
> ads on the site with new images from the sponsors. I'll post a bug #
> once I get that going so we can track any changes. 

https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=93588

Doesn't look like the trustees have a bugzilla account, or I would cc:
them too. We may want to make one.

Cheers,

-- 
Lance Albertson <ramereth@gentoo.org>
Gentoo Infrastructure | Operations Manager

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Re: [gentoo-trustees] Advertisement requests

[Sven Vermeulen]

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On Sun, May 22, 2005 at 01:21:37PM -0500, Lance Albertson wrote:
> Hrm, This is true. I thought there was something on the sponsors [1]
> page about this, but apparently not. Make a bug and assign it to me and
> I'll see about making an addition to that page that has requirements and
> some guidelines for it. Generally in the past, someone would email
> either me or Kurt about providing such hardware. If we felt that we
> needed it and could use, then we would go on from there. If they asked
> to have some kind of ad on our page, we would only do that depending on
> the level of things they offered to us. i.e. - if they provided a bunch
> of bandwidth/hardware/support, they would definately get exposure on our
> main page.
> 
> [1] http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/sponsors.xml

And if you'd receive 10 valid requests, would we increase the amount of
advertisements on our website again? And for how long do we state that the
advertisements last? 

You mentioned possible randomizing the position; do you also mean mixing
(like only showing a few of all available ones) or do we have a promise that
the ad is always visible)?

I can understand that, for continuous support, an advertisement stays until
the support is over. What about one-time (but quite large) donations? Or
is that not a possible target?

Wkr,
      Sven Vermeulen


-- 
  Documentation project leader - Gentoo Foundation Trustee

  The Gentoo Project   <<< http://www.gentoo.org >>>

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Re: [gentoo-trustees] Advertisement requests

[Corey Shields]

On Sunday 22 May 2005 12:47 pm, Sven Vermeulen wrote:
> I can understand that, for continuous support, an advertisement stays until
> the support is over. What about one-time (but quite large) donations? Or
> is that not a possible target?

IBM is about to send Gentoo a $30k+ 4-way power5 box, my thoughts were that 
they would be added to the sponsors page when it arrives..  Just an example..

-C

-- 
Corey Shields
Gentoo Linux Infrastructure Team and Devrel Team
Gentoo Foundation Board of Trustees
http://www.gentoo.org/~cshields
-- 
gentoo-trustees@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-trustees] Advertisement requests

[Lance Albertson]

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On Sun, 2005-05-22 at 21:47 +0200, Sven Vermeulen wrote:

> And if you'd receive 10 valid requests, would we increase the amount of
> advertisements on our website again? And for how long do we state that the
> advertisements last? 

Thats a good question for down the road. Preferably if we went to the
text-only ads (as mentioned in bug #93588 [1]), it wouldn't be as much
of a problem. I'd say the ads last as long as the service stands and as
long as we don't have any issues with the sponsor. Also, we don't have
to take every single hardware offer we get if we don't need it.

> You mentioned possible randomizing the position; do you also mean mixing
> (like only showing a few of all available ones) or do we have a promise that
> the ad is always visible)?

Well, orginally just mixing the order for all ads. But if we get to the
point where we have a lot of ads, we could go the route of only show X
number of ads in a rotation.

> I can understand that, for continuous support, an advertisement stays until
> the support is over. What about one-time (but quite large) donations? Or
> is that not a possible target?

To me this would put the donation in more of a contributor rank and
file. Any information about the company would only show on the sponsor
page (plus a GWN article most likely thanking for their contribution).

For example, the IBM donation that corey mentioned about. It's best to
put the acknowledgement for that on the sponsors page.

[1] https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=93588#c3
-- 
Lance Albertson <ramereth@gentoo.org>
Gentoo Infrastructure | Operations Manager

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Re: [gentoo-trustees] Advertisement requests

[Lars Weiler]

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* Sven Vermeulen <swift@gentoo.org> [05/05/22 13:52 +0200]:
> In short, my questions are:
> - Do we find it feasible to have a contributions page?

How to handle anonymous contributors?  Is there a checkbox
in PayPal to let somebody hide the name or something like
this?

> - Should be decrease (or even nullify) the advertisements on the Gentoo
>   website (and therefore denying all advertisement requests)?

The advertisement would be okay, if it wouldn't be animated
pictures.  It's really annoying reading our website with
something catching your interest on the right side.  Static
advertisement would be okay, but best is without any in the
common layout and printed on a separate page.

Regards, Lars
-- 
Lars Weiler  <pylon@gentoo.org>  +49-171-1963258
Gentoo Linux PowerPC    : Manager and Release Engineer
Gentoo Infrastructure   : CVS Administrator
Gentoo Public Relations : Assistance for Europe

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Re: [gentoo-trustees] Advertisement requests

[Donnie Berkholz]

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Lance Albertson wrote:
> Doesn't look like the trustees have a bugzilla account, or I would cc:
> them too. We may want to make one.

Yeah, this is a good idea. Let's do it.

Bugzilla could also be an interesting place for discussing some issues
that normally stay on the private alias, so at least there's something
archived besides people's personal email.

Thanks,
Donnie
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Re: [gentoo-trustees] Advertisement requests

[Lance Albertson]

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On Sun, 2005-05-22 at 22:16 -0700, Donnie Berkholz wrote:

> Lance Albertson wrote:
> > Doesn't look like the trustees have a bugzilla account, or I would cc:
> > them too. We may want to make one.
> 
> Yeah, this is a good idea. Let's do it.
> 
> Bugzilla could also be an interesting place for discussing some issues
> that normally stay on the private alias, so at least there's something
> archived besides people's personal email.

Looks like we have a volunteer to go make it ;)

-- 
Lance Albertson <ramereth@gentoo.org>
Gentoo Infrastructure | Operations Manager

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Re: [gentoo-trustees] Advertisement requests

[Donnie Berkholz]

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Lance Albertson wrote:
> Looks like we have a volunteer to go make it ;)

I'd love to -- just waiting to see whether there's enough interest.
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Re: [gentoo-trustees] Advertisement requests

[Paul de Vrieze]

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On Sunday 22 May 2005 22:11, Lance Albertson wrote:
>
> To me this would put the donation in more of a contributor rank and
> file. Any information about the company would only show on the sponsor
> page (plus a GWN article most likely thanking for their contribution).
>
> For example, the IBM donation that corey mentioned about. It's best to
> put the acknowledgement for that on the sponsors page.

I think we should devise categories of sponsorship. Further we should 
properly record all sponsors/contributors and what we should do in 
return. Categories do not need to be time based, but if someone does a 
one time contribution they should be removed from the sponsor list after 
a reasonable time depending on the contribution. They might have a choice 
there in "high exposure for a short time" versus "lower exposure for a 
longer time"

Paul

-- 
Paul de Vrieze
Gentoo Developer
Mail: pauldv@gentoo.org
Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net

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