Re: UK Project Opportunity

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