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. 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. Just thinking. Maybe I'd better stick to thinking about calenders... (had to say that before someone else did... ;-) ) Jon

On Fri, 4 Dec 2009, Andrew Sly wrote:

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 (which could be withdrawn at any time.)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

The board isn't going to up and give you any money to pursue your projects, but rather the online tools with which to pursue them, and all will get the same support, as always, rather than picking one over the other: as always seems to be the dreams of those who would be king. We're all kings here, it's a round table, time to get used to it. Use the tools, we'll provide more tools. However, we'll still stay in the background, you can have all the glory.

_______________________________________________ gutvol-d mailing list gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d

On Sat, 5 Dec 2009, Marcello Perathoner wrote:

Michael S. Hart wrote:

...

The board isn't going to up and give you any money to pursue your projects, but rather the online tools with which to pursue them,

It will give you an account on a server. You could also ask ibiblio and you will get an account on a better server. Or you could rent your own server for $5 a month.

And we will still be glad to give your efforts publicity, volunteer requests, programs, listservers and support, fileservers and support, etc. I'm sure Marcello can tell you a hundred places you can get it better/cheaper. Right Marcello? [Then why do you say such things?]

The board will give you no money because it doesn't have any. It doesn't want any because having any would probably draw some question re. the legitimation of `the board´, like, who are those guys? when did we elect them?

As has been proven before, our volunteers can create their own boards, raise money, and all that, just as Distributed Proofreaders did. We would be more than happy to help with that, as well. I'm sure Marcello would be happy to help you just as much.

...

We're all kings here, it's a round table, time to get used to it.

Ah, that explains the frequency of elections.

You're all elected!!! Congratulations!!! Now get out there and DO IT!!! GO! GO!! GO!!!

Google and Amazon are not interested in this kind of good will. As far as I can tell, from having talked with them about with a lot more personal contact than most, they would just as soon be the ones to "kill the goose that lays the golden eggs," so gold will be all that much rarer and they can charge that much more. I've spent hours talking with them and could not even manage to get 1 penny per book for us. They have no intention of supporting us in any manner at all as per every one of these conversations. Of course, lightning COULD strike. . . . 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.

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.

Just thinking.

Maybe I'd better stick to thinking about calenders... (had to say that before someone else did... ;-) )

Jon _______________________________________________ gutvol-d mailing list gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d

On Fri, Dec 04, 2009 at 07:40:14PM -0800, James Adcock wrote:

Not sure I understand the question, but I think I have already offered the files to the Kindle community. See freekindlebooks.org - A site I created a couple years ago when PG said it wasn't interested in supporting the ebook community. Now PG decided it DOES want to offer EPUB and MOBI file format support. So then I say, OK now that you are offering EPUB and MOBI file format support, why not go the last 1% of the way and do what is necessary to *really* make it useful to the ebook community? But when I ask that question, I get beaten up. Which I don't understand.

Jim, I sense your frustration. I'll try to explain a couple of things. (I was writing this on a plane, and sending now, but see Michael already said much the same thing.) What you might not realize is that there are really only two people who have access to edit the main content on gutenberg.org: Marcello, and me. I mostly make very small changes, and try not to break things. That's just the way it is -- so, development by additional people, like you, needs to happen elsewhere. There is no "PG" who is doing, or failing to do, things you'd like to see at gutenberg.org. It's simply a lack of a labor pool, and, to some extent, a lack of knowing just what to do (or at least, what YOU'd like done). You've been encouraged in a couple of ways to go for it. If there is something you need to demonstrate your ideas, I will try to help. The only thing I don't have is someone to do it for you, or to pick up on your examples and apply them to gutenberg.org. The thing that motivates Michael, and me, is giving away eBooks. We have taken great pains over the years (Michael since 1971, me since 1991, and with involvement of many other people) to make sure that the colection's contents can continue to be enjoyed for many years in the future. This is where the appearance of resistance to new formats comes from: we have a few formats in the collection that we can no longer easily fix or regenerate, and some (just a few) files for which no contemporary reader exists. So, for a little while, we have been instead emphasizing automatic conversion to new formats -- rather than storing them as part of the main collection.

Its not that I am just being impossible. It's that I really don't understand WHY PG WOULDN'T want to support the ebook community? To me ebook readers are the obvious and natural way to be reading PG texts. As opposed to what, printing them out on your teletype? Or dragging around a laptop and tied to a WIFI connection so you can read in HTML format doesn't seem like a particularly happy reading experience to me! And reading through the peephole of a cellphone makes as much sense to me as distributing PG texts one line at a time via fortune cookies. If one is going thru the pain and trouble of making electronic texts, why not make them as pleasant and fun to read as a paperback novel?

As far as "PG" goes (in the microcosm of where Michael's leadership points us), it's all good. We have never said, "thou shalt only access content with a fully-featured computer." We do have some expectations for files that we add to the collection, but that is behind the scenes. For the humans that want to access an eBook, more methods for more devices are good. Since conversion on the fly often offers an easy way to provide immediate access to different formats, or even different converters for the same format, it can be quite easy to add a new converter. In this thread, we've been talking about transforming the rest of the site (not just the eBooks, but also stuff like the catalog pages and Wiki pages) so it is friendlier for eReaders and other devices. Marcello does have some plans for this, but there is room for more than one implementation...and for experimentation. I think my main message is: It's important not to mistake the debate & cricitism on gutvol-d, or elsewhere, as somehow stopping you from doing things. Or from those things to become "official." Also, on deep linking (a comment from another message you sent): Marcello already mentioned that there are exceptions, and your sites qualify. Go ahead & do it.

heck, i'd even think you could charge a dollar or two for these files, and release them as kindle-books, available in the kindle store, and make a few bucks to subsidize your work, not to mention help out the whole kindle scene.

Again, go for it. Charging money for content isn't PG's bailiwick, but don't let that stop you. At least a few people make or made a reasonable portion of their livelihood with PG content. It's ok to do, and we'll even link to your site. More: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Permission_How-To -- Greg Newby Dr. Gregory B. Newby Chief Executive and Director Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation http://gutenberg.org A 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization with EIN 64-6221541 gbnewby@pglaf.org

Don't need the buck here and there actually, -- but you need only look at the amazon.com Kindle books section to see that 100s of other people are doing exactly what you suggest. My counter-question would be if PG is doing 99% of the work already, why not put in the last 1% so that PG gets the credit for the good work and can put a link in there that says "hey if you like PG's good work then how about making a small donation to PG [as opposed to donating to Amazon -- which takes the lion's share of the fees from downloaded books from their website] ??? Gosh, I work hard to try to get donations for PG and I just get told what an evil person I am! Again, all I want is free electronic books that are easy and pleasant to read - in honest to god practice not in theory!