Re: GNOME Newsletter...writing and editing

[Pat Costello <Patrick Costello Sun COM>]

> 
> Have any subscription fees been discussed yet? 
> What I'm thinking of, will it bring in enough money for the extra hassel
> (and lesser readers) that you get instead of having it as a PDF
> downloadable?
> 
> Perhaps have it possible to subscribe to paper copy and also have it
> downloadable as PDF? 
> 
> I think it's a great initiative but it would be a real shame if we could
> get lots of readers (and have a nice way for external people to get a
> good picture of the project).

I tend to agree with Mikael about charging real bahts, dinars and tugriks for 
GNOME enlightenment. It seems a bit perverse for an open-source community to be 
talking about paying subscriptions. I suppose, it all depends on what the 
objective of the newsletter is: 

- To raise funds, in which case you gotta charge, but then the content is gonna 
have to be highly desireable. 

- To cover production costs, i.e. printing. Do you really want to get into the 
Rupert Murdoch business? Seems like a downloadable file would do just fine. 

- To spread the word about GNOME, in which case free is best. 

Also, issuing subscriptions implies a contractual obligation to supply a certain 
number of issues per year, on time. With all good will in the world, given the 
GNOME record for, urk, flexible interpretation of the calendar do you really 
need this extra obligation? 

Pat