From: Alan Horkan (horkana@tcd.ie)
Date: Thu Jul 04 2002 - 07:41:31 EDT
> William Lachance pointed out that AWN is one of the very visible things
> we have which makes AbiWord look like an active project, unlike many
> others where all time between releases is silence before the storm.
very good point
> I know that. I joined AbiWord development originally due to AWN (which
> lured me) and POWs (which kept me in). This is also why I started
> editing AWN when Sam stopped.
i remember paul (?) tried to revive the Project of the Week ages ago. I
agree it is important, so if people have ideas of how to run this
efficientlly (maybe by selecting trivial/ehancement bugs?) and revive it
please mail the developer list.
> But the problem is, I'm not sure it's worth spending my time/energy on
> AWN anymore. There's been far too little feedback from readers for me to
> want to spend more time on it. Going subscription based is my attempt at
> finding the energy to continue by forcing the readers to acknowledge an
> interest in what I do, basically.
> I've briefly considered adding a clause to the effect of:
>
> If more than 200 people pay for a subscription in any one quarter,
> AWN will be publically available in that quarter.
>
> Of course, it requires very little imagination to see the resulting
> private/public/private/public states each quarter this could result in.
Ah, the Street Performer Protocol,
yet another way to earn a fair price.
> Not to mention the fact that those first 200 subscribers would feel
> suckered when I started making AWN public again.
it might work if the fee is small, which it is. subcribers would get the
news in a timely manner, which is what makes it most useful. if they knew
in advance i would be surprised if they felt cheated, the old news would
be added to the free archive eventually anyway (i would guess).
> There is an alternative which I didn't bother mention because it's so
> unlikely to happen; some corporation with an interest in AWN continuing
> to be publically available could pay me the equivalent of 200
> subscriptions per quarter. I would still get no feedback from the
> readers, but at least I would have financial compensation (yeah, my time
> is for sale).
in terms of feedback perhaps a message board at the bottom of the news
would help ...
might not be worth the setup and maintainance tho'
> Nobody would be more happy for AWN to remain public and gratis edited by
> me, but it would require a fundamental change in human behavior or some
> corp to give me money. Both rather unlikely, I'm afraid...
Here's hoping it all works out well
> Thanks,
> Jesper
Thanks for providing us with the free service for so long
Sincerely
Alan Horkan
PS i probably should not have replied to both list, consider carefully
before replying to all
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