Manuel Lemos wrote: > Hello, > > on 02/16/2010 10:29 PM Nathan Rixham said the following: >>>> Thank you very much for all you're help and sorry you couldn't bleed >>>> some money out of me on this occasion - perhaps you'll manage with >>>> you're next spam to the list. >>> Personally I regret that you need to be hostile and rude when I was >>> legitimately trying to help you. I do not recall ever seeing you here. >>> You seem to act as if I hurt you in someway in the past. If I ever did >>> that, I sincerely apologise. >>> >>> Anyway, I just think you probably are misunderstanding my work. I hope >>> it does not upset you that I carry on working on projects that I believe >>> to benefit the PHP developers in general. >>> >>> >> I'm unsure now TBH >> >> 1/2 of me is reading your response and thinking; sure sounds fair; >> >> the other half me is thinking "if I took all your opensource work (and >> other peoples) then wrapped it up in a site filled with adverts, then >> piggy backed on paid services like job postings and premium members etc >> to it - so that I could make a living; would that be a good thing to do >> / would it be "cool"? then counter thought of if those people >> contributed the code. > > There seems to be a small detail that may have escaped you. I do not > take anybody opensource. The authors voluntarily submit their work to > the site. hence why I said: "if those people contributed the code." - I'm thinking about it from both angles - just to clarify, all your content is contributed willingly by authors, and I'm in no way suggesting it isn't - rather I was contemplating the business model in both scenarios. > I am not abusing from anybody's work without permission because the > authors submitted it to the PHPClasses.org because they wanted to. fully concurred and glad that's cleared up! >> in all honesty the following are the sticking point that make it hard >> for me to decide if I was right in my earlier response: >> >> 1: that the "sign up to get the class" is even part of the equation > > This is another misunderstanding. The site does not make anybody > register to download any package. That is an option determined by each > author. > > That is explained in the site FAQ and other places, but some people > still misunderstand it and assume that it is an evil imposition of the site. > > http://www.phpclasses.org/faq/#register-to-download > > It may not be obvious, but the truth is that this detail is one of the > reasons for the success of the site. again, hence why I said "part of the equation"; it is can be switched on and off by the author on a per file basis, but to me it would make more sense to leave the decision of signing up to the user, and not try and influence it in anyway - personally I would remove the optional part of it and simply do what other sites do; present the user with two choices "register and download" or "download without registering". A similar topic of opt-in vs opt-out on emails is often discussed; however I believe it has to be "opt-in" now, within the UK certainly. >> 2: that developer listings are visible to premium only peopl > > Also, if you are a premium subscriber, everybody can contact you if you > want to provide paid services. > > Of course, as aI mentioned, if you are a great contributor that sent > innovative packages, you get your premium subscription for free. ... I see no discussion here; personally (as a user, and an author) I find that a little off-putting; but as you mentioned it is a business, and thus a business decision (as is all of this I guess!). >> 3: that users can't delete an account > > That is explained in the FAQ. The site does not allow users to recreate > accounts with the same address or access name. If you really delete an > account, you have no way to prevent that an user recreates an account > with the same access name and e-mail address. That would be a hole for > malicious users to cheat on several types of rankings and contests that > the site organizes. > > http://www.phpclasses.org/faq/#delete-account > > Other than that, most sites out there never really delete accounts. Some > claim they do, but then you try to create an account with the same > credentials and the site says the account still exists. I would rather > tell users the truth. I've read it quite a few times, and as a developer I know very well that you could delete the account and prevent the address from being re-used very easily with little code; the ethics of making somebody remove each tiny bot of info and file from your site in order to manually remove themselves is a bit.. debatable to me - again, personally I'd do it the same way as everybody else, giving the user the option of whether to make the username and email address available to be re-registered. I strongly feel all these kind of choices should be in the hands of the user, and not the company. > >> 4: the amount of adverts > > I wish it was viable to remove all the ads. That would mean that the > site could succeed on revenue from other services. Advertising was plan > B. I still hope someday I can take all ads down. Meanwhile, premium > subscribers have all ads removed from the site. In some cases, they see > other valuable information in the place of the ads. the amount; not suggesting you remove adverts all together, it's the currency of the web! >> Certain things like having paid Job postings on there >> are fair enough and I'll remove from the equation; just the 4 things >> above that I can't decided over. >> >> Maybe I am misunderstanding, perhaps I was a bit harsh - I would be >> interested to know if it is a "full time job"; obviously we can't have >> you working for nothing whilst you're family suffers. > >> It bothered me that I may have flamed you for no reason, so I took >> council from a few people - one said I was definitely right to do so; >> one wasn't sure after your response; and the other said "opensource >> people shouldn't play that game" (ie monetize / pull a salary from >> contributed work). I'm wondering why it is that people are unsure about >> your website, yet see sourceforge and github etc with there adverts as okay. > > Nowadays it is not that dramatic. That was more a problem after the > dotcom bubble in 2001 when there were no alternatives to monetize a > content site. The site was at a greater risk of closing. > > Nowadays I am just happy that I work for myself on a project that I have > chosen to dedicate full time. It is just not a matter of money, although > more money helps investing on things like the design contest that > allowed paying the best user chosen design for the site. > > There are much more things upcoming. Most of the things are based on > suggestions from users because that is the way to make this a more > satisfactory project for everybody. > > But I have to manage this as any real business to keep it viable. > > Most people that use the site do it to some how make money for > themselves, being that using code or solutions found on the site to > develop paid projects for clients, find developers to work on their > projects, etc.. > > The site charges for some services, but I believe it charges reasonable > amounts for the benefits it provides and the paying users will make much > more using such benefits. > I do hope it all goes well for you and the community, and that the right choices are made - when in doublt just look at the big guys like sourceforge, github etc and see how they do it - the better your service and easier it is for users, the more chance you get of full donated hosting and investments - I guess a good measure will be when you have several of the big PHP projects / libraries on there. regards, nathan -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
