Re: [mv] Raising Money

[Paul Heimbach <heimbach@ns.kconline.com>]

******    message to minivend-users from Paul Heimbach <heimbach@ns.kconline.com>     ******

A pair of quick comments on Birgitt's email - I've left enough of it 
below to ID it.

1.  Has anyone thought of approaching O'Reilly (Publishers) on this? 
Publishers
often "hand out" advances, and there's no reason to no think that we don't have
something here that is (in its field) the equivalent of a BSD or a mySQL.
           a.  I've not been with this project long enough to know 
just how much work folks
other than Mike have put in (I imagine there have been lots of folks, 
though with
contributions....
           b.  If something like O'Reilly were to work out, and 
distribution of proceeds became
a serious issue, (doubtful, given the good ideas already voiced for using it)
  vote could always be taken to donate the money to a cause. IN this,
we would follow the lead of organizations like the RSA bit-challenge 
group, and in
some measure, SETI.  (What greater way to promote one's product / documentation
than to say "a portion of the proceeds goes to X (Y, and Z) charity....

2.   OTOH, I'm sure (or at least I hope) that I'm not alone when I 
say that just as there
are souls like Mike and other key (and peripheral) members of the MV 
development
team who give their blood, sweat and brain-cells to see something 
like this succeed,
there are those who, while we don't have the programming talents, 
have the ability
to take in large chunks of data and return them in manageable format.
While I hardly have vast empty slots of time on my hands, I've been 
through the 3.14 and
surrounding installs, and have about doubled the size of the existing 
literature with hand
written notes. (mostly cautions to potential replacements - "don't do 
this - here's
what happens if you ....", but some good documentation (I think) of 
ways in which I've
pushed MV's limits - ways probably not unknown to other members of this forum,
but ways also not in the docs.

I'm sure I'm not alone in this.

3. One last thing popped into my head - and I don't want to start 
another thread here,
unless it is productive.  Have we ever thought of creating a mailing 
list archive like those
made available by BlueWorld for a number of different software packages?

I say that because doing so might be quicker to execute short-term, 
while relieving any
emergent documentation writers of a good bit of time-pressure..

Hope these help,
Hope they don't mirror things said already.

Paul Heimbach


>******    message to minivend-users from Birgitt Funk 
><birgitt@minivend.com>     ******
>
>
>Hi Minivendors,
>
>I really would be very grateful, if some of you, preferably the ones
>who have done a lot of successful consultancy work and set up many MV
>catalog, would give your (public or private) opinion about the
>idea to raise some money for further documentation and development.
>
>I am just wondering if those of you, who have successfully set up
>storefronts for so many customers and companies, couldn't lobby those
>companies and ask for donations pointing out how much money you
>saved them in using MV, MySql, Linux and showing off a bit the
>flexibility and scalability of MV.
>
>
>	-- Why working on a free documentation when in fact I/we
>               could work on a book about MV and sell it my/ourselves ?
>
>	-- Why giving a away a good documentation for free ?
>               (Here I think the documentation could be sold for
>               a price and the proceeds could go back into the
>               documentation or further development fund).
>
>	-- MV is so difficult, only the developer can write the
>	      documentation. The job is too complicated. The job
>	      is just not worth our effort. Too many shopping
>	      carts around already. Why get into the hassle ?
>

-- 
Paul Heimbach,
Director, KC data/design group (KCOnline, Inc)
DBAdmin/CIO - Whitman Group

E-commerce/database/web applications, browser-based site updates,
& large-scale site architecture/development for Northern Indiana!

http://www.kconline.com, http://www.hoosierlink.net ,
http://www.healthkeepers.net / http://www.healthpro.net
Private Sites:
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Weather Jumpstation
and http://www.adhdfocus.org
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