Ad policy

[Oisin Feeley]

On Tue, 16 Dec 2008 21:55:29 -0500, "Paul W. Frields"
<stickster at gmail.com> said:

[snip introduction detailing how FWN#156 came to run an advertisement]
 
> However, I realize now that some community members might see running
> that ad as a strange entanglement between Red Hat and Fedora.  While I
> may not agree with that viewpoint, I can understand it.  The FWN goes
> out on our mailing lists, and if we allowed unrestricted ads elsewhere
> on the mailing lists, assuming anyone wanted to run such ads, it would
> undoubtedly upset a lot of people.

I hope no one has actually complained. We ran the ad because it is of
direct and immediate interest to a large class of Fedora users (whom I
hope read FWN), those who are interested in Fedora as a chance to become
acquainted with technologies which may be in future Red Hat releases.
So, to me it's definitely news and relevant to the Fedora Project.  
 
> However, if FWN had a clear ad policy, that might help alleviate such
> concerns in the future.  I think the FWN editorial staff should talk
> with their contributors here, and decide on some sort of advertisement
> policy for the FWN.

A policy is a good idea so that all potential viewpoints can be
discussed before any crisis and we can't be accused of making
inconsistent decisions or practicing some sort of favoritism. I'll offer
my simple (probably simplistic) perspective and I hope that the other
Beat writers will contribute theirs:

* Ads should cohere with the goals of the Fedora Project: promoting
freedom and openness
  i.e. we would not be interested in discounts on non-Free software or
  training to use non-Free software.

* We should not accept money for advertisements in order to maintain our
independence. 
  
* Ads should offer tangible, immediate benefits to Fedora Project
members as long as the other conditions are met.
  So, for example, if LPI wished to offer a discount to Fedora Project
  members we would run that too as it is likely to be of material
  benefit to many members and does not promote non-Free software and is
  distribution neutral.

* Other Operating Systems or distributions are not of interest unless
they are derivatives of Fedora.
  i.e. RHEL, Yellow Dog, BLAG, Aurora, MythDora

I'm not sure about hypothetical situations involving non-OS-specific
discounts, say for example the FSF or EFF wished to extend some offer to
GNU/Linux users in general. I think that should not be a problem unless
it were to turn out in the future that more than, say, 20% of our
content was advertisements. That seems highly unlikely though.

Best wishes,
-- 
  Oisin Feeley
  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/OisinFeeley