Idea to bring revenue to CP

Thomas Stockwell

Just include a disclaimer similar to: Donations do not constitute an agreement for the projects' continuation or satisfactory customer service. Donations are strictly to show appreciation to the site and the authors work thus far.

Regards, Thomas Stockwell Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning. Visit my Blog

Vasudevan Deepak Kumar

Chris Maunder wrote:

Donators suddenly assume that their $5 entitles them to Royalty.

There should be a strong sentence (Terms of Service) to indicate and clarify the stand and indemnify CP and/or the author against such (un)written agreements/bindings.

Vasudevan Deepak Kumar Personal Homepage
Tech Gossips
All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts... --William Shakespeare

Shog9 0

Bad feelings are bad feelings, regardless of whether the person feeling bad can take legal action.

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You're right. These facts that you've laid out totally contradict the wild ramblings that I pulled off the back of cornflakes packets.

Hans Dietrich

Shog9 wrote:

Bad feelings are bad feelings

If you want to talk about bad feelings, let's talk about the bad feelings I will have when CP needs rent money, or can't hire another editor, or can't replace a failing server. Just saying "Bad feelings are bad feelings" is not being proactive. You're a regular site visitor, you would be impacted too. What are your ideas to help CP? I can't think of any fund-raising activity that wouldn't be open to the kind of exposure that you're talking about. To paraphrase what you said, Unreasonable people are unreasonable people.

Best wishes, Hans

[CodeProject Forum Guidelines] [How To Ask A Question] [My Articles]

Chris Maunder

Exactly. What we're doing is working to provide services for the community that are useful, valuable, which are available elsewhere (or maybe not...) and which are something that someone who needs the service will be willing to pay for. We pride ourselves on having on-topic and unoffensive advertising, and we've recently launched a job board. We have a few more ideas for things that Just Make Sense that will enable us to grow while providing good priced services. #1 for me is to build the community and the resources we have and to keep the CodeProject we all know absolutely free. Free for me means "not even donations". Dave sometimes rolls his eyes and mentions the new range of database servers out there but even he agrees it's not worth muddying the water. We're doing OK and have fantastic sponsors who support us and who understand why we are so picky sometimes, and as long as we maintain those great relationships the electricty will stay on :)

cheers, Chris Maunder

CodeProject.com : C++ MVP

Chris Maunder

So I should sue someone if they write me an abusive email after donating? No.

cheers, Chris Maunder

CodeProject.com : C++ MVP

Nish Nishant

Chris Maunder wrote:

So I should sue someone if they write me an abusive email after donating?

I don't think that's what VDK is talking about - rather he's talking about the reverse scenario. He means that someone (a donor) cannot sue an author just because the author hasn't fixed a bug in an article.

Regards, Nish

Nish’s thoughts on MFC, C++/CLI and .NET (my blog)
My latest book : C++/CLI in Action / Amazon.com link

Nish Nishant

Chris Maunder wrote:

The issue we've always had with accepting donations is that you also accept the donators right to yell very loudly at you when the code doesn't work perfectly, when the author doesn't have time to answer questions, when the reader wants new features or when someone votes the donator's comment down. Donators suddenly assume that their $5 entitles them to Royalty.

Do you think this is something that can be done outside of CP? A 3rd party website run by a few regular CPians, that will have no official association with CP. It will just provide an interface via which readers can voluntarily contribute to authors, and the site will redirect a percentage of contributions to CP.

Regards, Nish

Nish’s thoughts on MFC, C++/CLI and .NET (my blog)
My latest book : C++/CLI in Action / Amazon.com link

Nish Nishant

Shog9 wrote:

Bad feelings are bad feelings, regardless of whether the person feeling bad can take legal action.

But bad feelings already do exist. The percentage of people who have the mental makeup to make a voluntary contribution will hardly be the sort of people who will develop bad feelings because an author did not do a regular update of his code.

Regards, Nish

Nish’s thoughts on MFC, C++/CLI and .NET (my blog)
My latest book : C++/CLI in Action / Amazon.com link

Hans Dietrich

I like it. If you want to take it further, let me know.

Best wishes, Hans

[CodeProject Forum Guidelines] [How To Ask A Question] [My Articles]

Vasudevan Deepak Kumar

Nishant Sivakumar wrote:

He means that someone (a donor) cannot sue an author just because the author hasn't fixed a bug in an article

True. That would ensure a safe and secure atmosphere for everyone.

Vasudevan Deepak Kumar Personal Homepage
Tech Gossips
All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts... --William Shakespeare

Nish Nishant

Hans Dietrich wrote:

If you want to take it further, let me know.

Yes, I would like to take it further. But I thought we should wait to see if Chris is alright with it.

Regards, Nish

Nish’s thoughts on MFC, C++/CLI and .NET (my blog)
My latest book : C++/CLI in Action / Amazon.com link

realJSOP

Chris Maunder wrote:

The issue we've always had with accepting donations is that you also accept the donators right to yell very loudly at you when the code doesn't work perfectly, when the author doesn't have time to answer questions, when the reader wants new features or when someone votes the donator's comment down.

When I was writing software for my racing addiction, I had the following clause on my support web pages: Please do not offer to pay me in any way for this software. I appreciate the sentiment, but that's not why I'm doing this. Quite frankly, I'm a lazy bastard and only work on the code when there's something drastically wrong with it, or if there's something that needs to be added. If I let someone pay me for this garbage, then they might feel like I owe them something, and that irritates the hell outa me. What's even worse, since I'm more magnanimous than anyone here could ever believe, I might even lean towards allowing a certain level of transgressive behavior if a "paid" member were to step way out of line in the forums. Simply put, people would be paying for and expecting the privilege of being untouchable wankers. However, I think if people really want to donate, you could put up a page that allows them to, with clearly stated text reminding them that their donations do not garner for them any special privileges. Of course, this could also present a tax problem, and so on and so forth, so maybe you should put this topic to rest permanently.

"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001

peterchen

As my sis describes that, "you bought a ticket, not the plane". :D Still, I like the idea. Might also be an incentive for really high-quality articles. *nudge nudge*

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peterchen

I like the idea as well. If you need a hand of an, uh, not-really-useful-as-web-developer guy, drop me a line.

Burning Chrome ^ | Linkify!| FoldWithUs! | sighist