On Sat, 5 Dec 2009, Jon Richfield wrote:
Someone (BB?) said something about asking the likes of Kindle and GBks for a morsel on account for all the work that PG has put in so far. Someone else said that he did not need the odd dollar. MH MIGHT argue (or not, I am not putting words into his mouth) that getting paid would go against the principles of PG.
If I recall correctly, the argument I've heard is that there is no problem with PG _receiving_ funding, but a strong desire to make sure that it would not then turn into an organization that _depends on_ funding. (which could be withdrawn at any time.)
Well, yesss... but the freeness of our products was intended for people to whom this sort of thing matters. If Googlebooks and Amazon could subsidise PG to the tune of a couple of hundred K / year, they could win much goodwill and transform the PG infrastructure. They would, at trivial cost, increase their resources of independently produced material. I realise that they want their own formats, but the main problem in book digitisation is not conversion of format, but capturing of edited material. It would be worth it for them. And if one of the companies accepted, and the other refused, the political implications would be most uncomfortable.
Hmmm.... that's a thought-provoking idea. It sounds great at first read. One contrary argument could be something like this: We are still very much a group of volunteers. As you may have noticed on this list, that can include much bickering, and so forth, but somehow things get done. If there were actually a good-sized cash infusion, I am very sure there would be a plethora of different ideas and much arguing about what to do with it... And of course, it would actually be the board that would have to officially do that, which would be a change from their "just stay in the background" usual way of doing things. --Andrew