BCS wrote:
>   The authors would
> publish the material for free and then make it clear that they accept donations and that they will put more priority on development activities that help those who are supporting them financially. 

That's Oracle's model - "we'll fix bugs the bugs you want us to if you pay us to". That is, for an exorbitant fee, you can have the bugs that affect your system prioritized. (That's after charging $50k a seat for the software and asking companies to pay a full-time Oracle consultant to fix the numerous problems that add in their software to keep any other DBA from touching it.)

What this does, is makes the company put out a buggy, hard-to-use piece of software (since they'll make more money if they fix fewer bugs). This means product advertising becomes much more financially viable than QA, and they stick in a bunch of untested features hoping someone bites and then pays to get the issues sorted out.

Reply to Robert,

> BCS wrote:
> 
>> The authors would
>> publish the material for free and then make it clear that they accept
>> donations and that they will put more priority on development
>> activities
>> that help those who are supporting them financially.
>
> That's Oracle's model -

<G> I've heard of people's dealings with them. (They at one point tried to sell the state of Oregon one seat for every person in the state)

However...

> "we'll fix bugs the bugs you want us to if you
> pay us to". That is, for an exorbitant fee, you can have the bugs that
> affect your system prioritized. 

nix the exorbitant fee and replace it with a reasonable one ...

> (That's after charging $50k a seat for
> the software 

charge nothing for the program to began with...

> and asking companies to pay a full-time Oracle consultant
> to fix the numerous problems that add in their software to keep any
> other DBA from touching it.)

give a "nice user experience"...

> 
> What this does, is makes the company put out a buggy, hard-to-use
> piece of software (since they'll make more money if they fix fewer
> bugs). 

and somehow avoid human nature regarding that and you might actually be able to make it work.

As I said, it would be an experiment.

Lars Ivar Igesund Wrote:

>Then there is
t>he last aspect of this particular book, and that is that all money that o>therwise would have gone to us authors (not the publisher's share, are
>donated back to the D community (DSource and Tango sofar).

what you do with your money is your business.

If it is so donated back to the D community then nothing is lost by a torrent download as it will only be downloaded by existing or future members of the D Community

BCS wrote:
> Reply to Lars,
> 
>> Well, there are quite a few successful companies which has such a business model in the software business, so hardly what could be called an experiment.
>>
>> All Linux distributing companies (RedHat, Suse/Novell, Canonical),
>> TrollTech with Qt, mySQL (you know the thing ;), eZ (ez.no), and many
>> many more.
>>
> 
> Most of those, IIRC, have a free version and a for sale version and they provide tech support only on the for sale one. That not quite what I was thinking. I'm thinking, no for sale version at all. The company would just have a donations page, and an explicit statement that donations can effect the priority of fixing particular bugs and whatnot.
> 
> 
I knew of a band that has exactly this model. they advertise on their
website the amount o money needed to record their next album (renting a
studio, and stuff like that) which surprisingly is in the range of
20K-30K$ (not millions as the record companies makes us think).
anyway, the idea is that the real fans, those that are willing to donate
money to the band have influence of the content of the album. so if all
the fans who paid want love songs, than the band will produce an album
of love songs. of course, the band reserves some creative judgment for
themselves.
Personally i'm not into that music so i don't know what happened to
them, but last time i looked at their site, probably a year ago, they
already had one album and half the money to produce the next one, or
something like that.

BCS wrote:
> Reply to Lars,
> 
>> BCS wrote:
>>
>>> Reply to Lars,
>>>
>>>> Well, there are quite a few successful companies which has such a business model in the software business, so hardly what could be called an experiment.
>>>>
>>>> All Linux distributing companies (RedHat, Suse/Novell, Canonical),
>>>> TrollTech with Qt, mySQL (you know the thing ;), eZ (ez.no), and
>>>> many many more.
>>>>
>>> Most of those, IIRC, have a free version and a for sale version and they provide tech support only on the for sale one. That not quite what I was thinking. I'm thinking, no for sale version at all. The company would just have a donations page, and an explicit statement that donations can effect the priority of fixing particular bugs and whatnot.
>>>
>> I don't see the difference? The software is the same - either you download it, or you pay, then download it. Or you can download, then pay later if you decide to use it.
>>
> 
> The difference is you never pay for the software, end of story. The cost, no matter what, is Zero. Possibly even the tech support would be free. It would be like if Walter started putting price tags on bugs "pay me $50 and I'll fix bug X sooner ($250 and I'll do it now) or don't and I'll get around to it sooner or later" (Not that I think he would do that, or that he should or should not) I would a a sort of vote with cash for what you think is important. Not a good way to run a country, but it might work for a company.
> 
> 

also i forgot to mention, natural-docs operate in that matter. you can pay to make your preferred language higher on the todo list.

Lars Ivar Igesund wrote:

> When it comes to the publisher, it has a much bigger role than just printing it - indeed at least 4 persons at Apress (among them 2 types of editors) + one external technical editor has been involved in creating the product that has resulted in both the printed version and the ebook, and so the publisher has an obvious financial stake in both versions. Thus I am not legally entitled to sell copies of the book and take the money myself, something I couldn't do in any case as I have 3 co-authors. Then there is the last aspect of this particular book, and that is that all money that otherwise would have gone to us authors (not the publisher's share, are donated back to the D community (DSource and Tango sofar).
> 
> So in effect, this particular book wouldn't have happened at all without a publisher.
> 
> 
when I used your name in my posts that was meant to mean all the authors
of the book of course, not just you :) i was just lazy typing all the
names so i chose you since you were the one who initially replied.
my question is this: if you (all the authors) are not entitled to sell
the book yourselves, does it mean than that your publisher has some part
of the copy-rights in the book?
if the answer is yes than the situation is completely different from
what i thought, since the point was not violating anyones copy-rights.

Reply to Yigal,

> I knew of a band that has exactly this model.
> the idea is that the real fans, those that are willing to
> donate
> money to the band have influence of the content of the album.

cool!

BCS wrote:
> Reply to Robert,
> 
>> BCS wrote:
>>
>>> The authors would
>>> publish the material for free and then make it clear that they accept
>>> donations and that they will put more priority on development
>>> activities
>>> that help those who are supporting them financially.
>>
>> That's Oracle's model -
> 
> <G> I've heard of people's dealings with them. (They at one point tried to sell the state of Oregon one seat for every person in the state)
> 
> However...
> 
>> "we'll fix bugs the bugs you want us to if you
>> pay us to". That is, for an exorbitant fee, you can have the bugs that
>> affect your system prioritized. 
> 
> nix the exorbitant fee and replace it with a reasonable one ...
> 
>> (That's after charging $50k a seat for
>> the software 
> 
> charge nothing for the program to began with...
> 
>> and asking companies to pay a full-time Oracle consultant
>> to fix the numerous problems that add in their software to keep any
>> other DBA from touching it.)
> 
> give a "nice user experience"...
> 
>>
>> What this does, is makes the company put out a buggy, hard-to-use
>> piece of software (since they'll make more money if they fix fewer
>> bugs). 
> 
> and somehow avoid human nature regarding that and you might actually be able to make it work.

Aye, there's the rub.

> As I said, it would be an experiment.

I'll give you that it would be an interesting experiment, but in my software, I'd rather prioritize the bugs that affect the largest group of users or are more important to the system in general than the ones that affect the highest-paying users. New features, though, I'd be more willing to see an auction system for.

Robert Fraser wrote:
> BCS wrote:
>> Reply to Robert,
>>
>>> BCS wrote:
>>>
>>>> The authors would
>>>> publish the material for free and then make it clear that they accept
>>>> donations and that they will put more priority on development
>>>> activities
>>>> that help those who are supporting them financially.
>>>
>>> That's Oracle's model -
>>
>> <G> I've heard of people's dealings with them. (They at one point tried to sell the state of Oregon one seat for every person in the state)
>>
>> However...
>>
>>> "we'll fix bugs the bugs you want us to if you
>>> pay us to". That is, for an exorbitant fee, you can have the bugs that
>>> affect your system prioritized. 
>>
>> nix the exorbitant fee and replace it with a reasonable one ...
>>
>>> (That's after charging $50k a seat for
>>> the software 
>>
>> charge nothing for the program to began with...
>>
>>> and asking companies to pay a full-time Oracle consultant
>>> to fix the numerous problems that add in their software to keep any
>>> other DBA from touching it.)
>>
>> give a "nice user experience"...
>>
>>>
>>> What this does, is makes the company put out a buggy, hard-to-use
>>> piece of software (since they'll make more money if they fix fewer
>>> bugs). 
>>
>> and somehow avoid human nature regarding that and you might actually be able to make it work.
> 
> Aye, there's the rub.
> 
>> As I said, it would be an experiment.
> 
> I'll give you that it would be an interesting experiment, but in my software, I'd rather prioritize the bugs that affect the largest group of users or are more important to the system in general than the ones that affect the highest-paying users. New features, though, I'd be more willing to see an auction system for.

I think Walter should instrument a policy where people can pay for certain bugs to be moved up in the prioritization queue.  It may even make companies feel safer using DMD if they can pay for particular bugs to be fixed.  However you'd have to be careful with a system like that, that high priority bugs are not just left there because they generate a lot of cash.  Maybe the money could go slowly down overtime, or people could withdraw their money if the bug was not fixed within there time frame.

Then I guess it could work like this.  Someone would post if you get bug X finished by Data Y then I'll pay you $G.

-Joel

soup2nuts Wrote:

> So are there any free ebooks out there for D or is this language still considered to be too new? And if there aren't what's a decent book to pick up, something the covers all the concepts fairly in depth?


http://www.mininova.org/tor/1106628