Has anybody experimented with (or succeeded with) any form of mailman list sponsorship? A nonprofit professional assocation I work for asked me for advice about it. If there are current examples I'd be curious to see them.
Thanks, Matt
On 05/15/2017 07:29 AM, Matt Morgan wrote:
Has anybody experimented with (or succeeded with) any form of mailman list sponsorship? A nonprofit professional assocation I work for asked me for advice about it. If there are current examples I'd be curious to see them.
I'm not sure if this is anything like what you have in mind, but if you look at the bottom of any of the https://mail.python.org/mailman/* pages (e.g. <https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users>) you will see s DigitalOcean logo and a Hosted by DigitalOcean link. DigitalOcean is in a sense a sponsor in that they provide the VPS that hosts mail.python.org and we get a little bit of credit for click-throughs on that link.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
All of the Mailman lists I host/admin are provided free of charge, as a value-add to the members of various non-profit groups. Insofar as the actual costs of providing a discussion or announcement list are hard to tease out, the best I could do would be to apportion the total costs of the servers they are on across all the other services I get. The income would be nice to offset my expenses but administering it would be nearly as great as that of adminning the lists themselves. So I treat it as my contribution to good causes.
Also, I have a philosophical/ethical problem with charging for simply providing a FOSS service. I know it's allowed but still...
-Chip-
On 5/15/2017 1:53 PM, Mark Sapiro wrote:
On 05/15/2017 07:29 AM, Matt Morgan wrote:
Has anybody experimented with (or succeeded with) any form of mailman list sponsorship? A nonprofit professional assocation I work for asked me for advice about it. If there are current examples I'd be curious to see them.
I'm not sure if this is anything like what you have in mind, but if you look at the bottom of any of the https://mail.python.org/mailman/* pages (e.g. <https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users>) you will see s DigitalOcean logo and a Hosted by DigitalOcean link. DigitalOcean is in a sense a sponsor in that they provide the VPS that hosts mail.python.org and we get a little bit of credit for click-throughs on that link.
On Mon, May 15, 2017 at 3:13 PM, Chip Davis <chip@aresti.com> wrote:
All of the Mailman lists I host/admin are provided free of charge, as a value-add to the members of various non-profit groups. Insofar as the actual costs of providing a discussion or announcement list are hard to tease out, the best I could do would be to apportion the total costs of the servers they are on across all the other services I get. The income would be nice to offset my expenses but administering it would be nearly as great as that of adminning the lists themselves. So I treat it as my contribution to good causes.
Also, I have a philosophical/ethical problem with charging for simply providing a FOSS service. I know it's allowed but still...
-Chip-
This is not about charging for mailman service, but rather the value-add of the community. I.e., it's a list for a professionals with ~10K subscribers. The list used to be run out of a university that dropped support for it several years ago. It was adopted by a nonprofit association, which pays money to keep the list running. This is about offsetting the cost of running the list, by allowing sponsorship by for profit members of the community who benefit from it.
It's not unlike corporate support of FOSS, for example.
On 5/15/2017 1:53 PM, Mark Sapiro wrote:
On 05/15/2017 07:29 AM, Matt Morgan wrote:
Has anybody experimented with (or succeeded with) any form of mailman list sponsorship? A nonprofit professional assocation I work for asked me for advice about it. If there are current examples I'd be curious to see them.
I'm not sure if this is anything like what you have in mind, but if you look at the bottom of any of the https://mail.python.org/mailman/* pages (e.g. <https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users>) you will see s DigitalOcean logo and a Hosted by DigitalOcean link. DigitalOcean is in a sense a sponsor in that they provide the VPS that hosts mail.python.org and we get a little bit of credit for click-throughs on that link.
Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/ma ilman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/minxme rtzmomo%40gmail.com
What I've always done is offered special pricing, usually at least 50% off for charitable 503(c) and other 'public service' type groups. It more depended on the resources they required and the amount of hand holding.
On 5/15/17 3:13 PM, Chip Davis wrote:
All of the Mailman lists I host/admin are provided free of charge, as a value-add to the members of various non-profit groups. Insofar as the actual costs of providing a discussion or announcement list are hard to tease out, the best I could do would be to apportion the total costs of the servers they are on across all the other services I get. The income would be nice to offset my expenses but administering it would be nearly as great as that of adminning the lists themselves. So I treat it as my contribution to good causes.
Also, I have a philosophical/ethical problem with charging for simply providing a FOSS service. I know it's allowed but still... [snip]
As Matt pointed out to me off-list, a lot of FOSS is provided for a profit.
I live about five miles from Red Hat, and teach Linux for a living. Perhaps I should have been more specific that "I have a philosophical/ethical problem with MY charging for simply providing a FOSS service."
While I would love to monetize the time I put into adminning the lists, it would be a pain to fairly calculate (or keep track of) it, so I consider it a mitzvah.
YMMV,
-Chip-
On 5/15/2017 5:17 PM, Richard Shetron wrote:
What I've always done is offered special pricing, usually at least 50% off for charitable 503(c) and other 'public service' type groups. It more depended on the resources they required and the amount of hand holding.
On 5/15/17 3:13 PM, Chip Davis wrote:
All of the Mailman lists I host/admin are provided free of charge, as a value-add to the members of various non-profit groups. Insofar as the actual costs of providing a discussion or announcement list are hard to tease out, the best I could do would be to apportion the total costs of the servers they are on across all the other services I get. The income would be nice to offset my expenses but administering it would be nearly as great as that of adminning the lists themselves. So I treat it as my contribution to good causes.
Also, I have a philosophical/ethical problem with charging for simply providing a FOSS service. I know it's allowed but still... [snip]
Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/chip%40aresti.com
On Mon, May 15, 2017 at 1:53 PM, Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> wrote:
Has anybody experimented with (or succeeded with) any form of mailman
sponsorship? A nonprofit professional assocation I work for asked me for advice about it. If there are current examples I'd be curious to see
On 05/15/2017 07:29 AM, Matt Morgan wrote: list them.
I'm not sure if this is anything like what you have in mind, but if you look at the bottom of any of the https://mail.python.org/mailman/* pages (e.g. <https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users>) you will see s DigitalOcean logo and a Hosted by DigitalOcean link. DigitalOcean is in a sense a sponsor in that they provide the VPS that hosts mail.python.org and we get a little bit of credit for click-throughs on that link.
Yes, that's a great example, thanks!. I'd also love to see examples of a sponsor message that's in the email messages (headers, footers, digests)--or, I know there are lots of good reasons not to do that, too, so it others considered it and ruled it out, it would be interesting to hear how that transpired.
Matt Morgan writes:
Yes, that's a great example, thanks!. I'd also love to see examples of a sponsor message that's in the email messages (headers, footers, digests)
Subject header: not enough room.
X-Face: you'd have to rotate sponsors if more than one, and it gets attached to From so only appropriate for announce lists. But an interesting idea for those.
Body header: don't do that unless not only does the donation cover list costs but also allows a dividend to the membership. ;-)
Digests: I think you'd have to alter the code to add stuff outside the posts themselves. Not a big deal though, post here for help ("Reply-To: self" appreciated on that kind of thing). Also, the content-type is text/plain, so logos are kind of out of the question here. It's possible that text/html would be possible, but I suspect that is a major feature request.
In non-digests, footer is good IMO. Again, a problem is that it's text/plain. text/html might work for you, but we know from dire experience that we can't afford to support it because: popular MUAs. (Unpopular MUAs can be supported because they generally are unpopular *because* they conform to relevant standards. :-P Go figure....)
--or, I know there are lots of good reasons not to do that, too, so it others considered it and ruled it out, it would be interesting to hear how that transpired.
I can't think of a good reason to not say "thank you", except when you say thank you to one supporter and not others. ;-)
Above is all IME IMHO YMMV (and everybody else MMV too).
Steve
On 15 May 2017, at 10:29, Matt Morgan wrote:
Has anybody experimented with (or succeeded with) any form of mailman list sponsorship? A nonprofit professional assocation I work for asked me for advice about it. If there are current examples I'd be curious to see them.
If the nonprofit is a 503 (c), you can get free hosting from DreamHost, and host the mailing list on that host. Assuming you want to admin your own host, that is.
-- Steve
On Mon, May 15, 2017 at 4:14 PM, Steve Burling <srb@umich.edu> wrote:
On 15 May 2017, at 10:29, Matt Morgan wrote:
Has anybody experimented with (or succeeded with) any form of mailman list
sponsorship? A nonprofit professional assocation I work for asked me for advice about it. If there are current examples I'd be curious to see them.
If the nonprofit is a 503 (c), you can get free hosting from DreamHost, and host the mailing list on that host. Assuming you want to admin your own host, that is.
Interesting, thanks. In this case the hosting cost is a smaller piece of the pie, but I'll look into that.
participants (6)
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Chip Davis -
Mark Sapiro -
Matt Morgan -
Richard Shetron -
Stephen J. Turnbull -
Steve Burling