what would you pay for good kernel documentation?

Robert P. J. Day rpjday-L09J2beyid0N/H6P543EQg at public.gmane.org
Sat Jun 5 14:41:15 UTC 2010


On Sat, 5 Jun 2010, Richard Weait wrote:

> On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 10:12 AM, Robert P. J. Day <rpjday-L09J2beyid0N/H6P543EQg at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> > On Sat, 5 Jun 2010, Mike Kallies wrote:
> >
> >> ... but if the 200 page guide were a monthly posting on a blog,
> >> I'm sorry to say that no, at this point in the history of the
> >> Internet, *I* wouldn't pay for articles online.... and I can't
> >> justify to management donating money to your website as a
> >> business expense :-)
> >
> >  *sigh*.  apparently, a colleague of mine was correct when i
> > bounced this idea off him.  he told me flat out that it wouldn't
> > work, and his reasoning was simply that the open source community
> > has become pathetically spoiled by all their software being free,
> > to the point where a lot of them think they're entitled to
> > anything they want at no cost.
>
> I think you missed Mike's smiley, Rob.
>
> Linux users consistently pay more for pay-what-you-will software
> than other OS users.  Here's one data point.  I remember seeing
> others similar to this.
> http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Linux-users-contribute-twice-as-much-as-Windows-users

... snip ...

> That said, the F/LOSS community can be pretty selective about where
> it chooses to offer financial support.  The F/LOSS community is
> also, as a rule, pretty well connected and informed, and probably
> see "way too many" sites seeking financial support.  Perhaps we've
> developed a thick skin towards supporting web sites because we see
> so many web sites that supporting all of them is out of the
> question.  Frankly we run a lot of web sites too.

  i understand all that.  i was making what i thought was a fairly
simple proposal and was wondering what others thought of it (on other
forums as well).  what i wasn't expecting was the number of reactions
along the lines of, "well, how much are you going to write and will
you guarantee it's all up to date and will we be able to contact you
personally and get personal attention for your kernel problems" and
nonsense like that because their five dollar contribution clearly
bestowed upon the right to dictate what i should be doing for them.

  i saw mike's smiley face.  he wasn't funny.

rday

-- 

========================================================================
Robert P. J. Day                               Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA

            Linux Consulting, Training and Kernel Pedantry.

Web page:                                          http://crashcourse.ca
Twitter:                                       http://twitter.com/rpjday
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