[Scummvm-devel] GOG-Affiliate program, recent additions to website

Jordi Vilalta jvprat at gmail.com
Fri Jan 23 18:31:24 CET 2009


Hi,

I don't have strong feelings about neither the GOG affiliation program
nor the website layout changes, but here comes my opinion.

2009/1/22 clem <clemty at gmail.com>:
>> (Eugene Sandulenko <sev at scummvm.org> to clemty at gmail.com,
>> cc sev at scummvm.org, Max Horn)
>>
>> Hi Clem,
>>
>> First thing I am really puzzled with is why did you post this message
>> on forums? There is scummvm-devel for such things, then there is e-mail
>> after all. So I took liberty and removed your post from here, and
>> quoting it below with my comments.
>>
>
> I saw the svn commit when the GOG-change was made to the templates; I voiced
> my concerns in the channel. Nobody seemed to take it seriously.
> I'm surprised that the GOG "affiliate program" was not discussed on -devel
> beforehand myself actually.
>
> Was there any prior discussion about the affiliate program on the channel?
> I can't find one in the logs offhand.
>
> I posted on the forum because this seemed the obvious place to reply to the
> announcement. I also posted there to have opinions from other (forum) users.
> I am not happy that my post miraculously vanished over night.

IMO this is the worst part of this issue. Clem just replied on the
first place where it made sense. I would also feel attacked if a
moderator removed one of my posts when I didn't break any forum rule.
People should be able to discuss forum posts with other users even if
they don't share the moderators' opinion (always without breaking the
rules).

Other than that, it would have been nice to see some discussion before
the announcement, though personally I don't disagree with the
decision. It feels like a collaboration agreement: I like what GOG.com
do, I don't mind supporting them start their enterprise with
advertisement (I wouldn't mind even if there was no money on the
table), and they even give us some revenue... what's bad with this?
Consider it their donation to the ScummVM project. This is how I
understand it and why I see it's different than adding random
advertisement or links to known auction sites.

>>> I'm a bit concerned where this takes the web design.
>>>
>>> In my opinion, the top bar of the forum is getting cluttered.

I think it's a separate issue, and it may be true (it doesn't annoy me
as it is now, but not everyone has the same tastes as me). Anyway I
don't see the reason for the proposal of completely removing the
links. A more constructive answer would have been an alternative place
for those links. While on the topic, I think the forum rules may fit
in the top links, even in bold.

[From a later mail:]
> Again, if the need for money had been discussed beforehand and the ads were
> agreed upon I wouldn't see that much of a problem. But putting bold text on a
> website without any apparent reason to create revenue reminds me more of a
> privately owned company than of an open source project.

I think you're mixing concepts here. We're working on free/open
source, and that doesn't say anything about money. I could sell
ScummVM CDs and use that money for my own purposes. In the GOG.com
case the money will go to the project, even if there's no need for it
right now. I consider it donations after all (like any user can do),
and the team can decide how to use it. Why not? I don't see what's
wrong there. What I think that would be nice is to add transparency on
how that money is used.

See you!




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