Rosetta Code talk:Finances
Any questions, leave them here. --Michael Mol 02:25, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
Write-off?
Can donations here be a write-off? Not sure what all the tax rules are. Is that related to the educational status you were trying to get? --Mwn3d 03:41, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
- No, donations can't be written off. Rosetta Code does not have 501(3)(c) status, or any other non-profit status. Yes, that's the educational status I'd like to get. To get it though, there really needs to be a financial history I can point the IRS at, and the paperwork (and required internal rules) are thicker. --Michael Mol 07:44, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
- have you considered joining organizations like Software in the Public Interest or the Software Freedom Conservancy? --eMBee 05:47, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
- Not deeply. I'd have to look long and hard at it; I would be worried that any umbrella organization I might join wouldn't have the same goals as I have, and may not have a compatible mindset to mine. (I'm largely thinking about licenses, economics, politics and philosophy, which I can easily see being epicenters for disagreement in direction.) I wouldn't be averse to discussing options and opportunities with any interested party, though. --Michael Mol 15:18, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
- well, there are only two really worth considering i think. SPI supports debian which includes even non-free software in their repositories so i don't think they'd have an issue with rosettacode supporting non-free language implementations. afterall, all the code is free. SFC is run by bradley kuhn who is working with the FSF which might be more of an issue regarding non-free languages but you'd have to ask. also i wonder if talking to them beats dealing with the IRS :-) --eMBee 15:51, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
- Not deeply. I'd have to look long and hard at it; I would be worried that any umbrella organization I might join wouldn't have the same goals as I have, and may not have a compatible mindset to mine. (I'm largely thinking about licenses, economics, politics and philosophy, which I can easily see being epicenters for disagreement in direction.) I wouldn't be averse to discussing options and opportunities with any interested party, though. --Michael Mol 15:18, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
- have you considered joining organizations like Software in the Public Interest or the Software Freedom Conservancy? --eMBee 05:47, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
Programming Task???
This page is currently being categorized as a programming task. I fail to see how to implement the site finances in C, Java, Perl, Tcl, or any of the other languages I know. Some mistake? –Donal Fellows 12:35, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
- Fixed now. Didn't realize I could edit the page at first. –Donal Fellows 12:39, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
- You've had sysop privs for a while, I suppose. :) --Michael Mol 12:51, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
Donate button
So it seems like the thing you feared the most was the most effective. At least for not it seems to be hidden away in places where more hardened users find it instead of on the top of every page with a progress bar. I wonder if you get ahead enough in the costs if you could end up taking it down. Or would you like to keep collecting money for future upgrades? --Mwn3d 17:42, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
- Yeah, it seems so, though I don't care for it; I'd much rather be able to hand a product back directly in exchange for cash, rather than indirectly as an open service. I'm still conflicted about it, but it became really necessary because my personal finances hit a crisis point where things risked being impossible to continue.
- I'd also rather leave the donate button out-of-the-way, as it is now, so that people will only see it at some point where they have a personal curiosity or interest in it. Pushing things in peoples' faces is a pretty quick way to turn them off. Letting them discover it on their own seems to have worked well right now.
- I'm also not going to take the button down, at least not as long as it's out of the way. I'm going to work at keeping things transparent. Savings are good (and I now have to start worrying about taxes, too!), and the extra can be put to good use in the future.
- Finally, I wanted to poke at you about the book stuff. I've got a particular direction I could (somewhat comfortably) go for a single book, but it relies on your experience as an RIT student/TA. --Michael Mol 17:59, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
There are some computer languages, which compilers are more or less company-bound. Why not ask the companies and offer Ad-space for them. Obvious examples may be C# or Java.
- Text-Link Ads supports targeted advertisement like that, but I have to add individual URLs to for their review, and there's no guarantee it'll hit their marketplace. I'll explicitly submit those two, however. --Michael Mol 19:15, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
urldogg
Too bad they are not real dollars...: Rosettacode.org gets about 4,651 pageviews per day, and earns an estimated $13.95 daily. --Rdm 18:12, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
- I must definitely be doing something wrong. Also, their pageviews count is low; According to Google Analytics, we had about 40k pageviews over the last 7 days. --Michael Mol 18:47, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
- I imagine they think that those page views are page views with full out ads (and perhaps popups) on every page. Though I have not really looked into what their assumptions are. --Rdm 18:55, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
Flattr
Along the lines of the donate button, there is also Flattr. I haven't used it or looked deeply into it, so I don't know what the full pros and cons are. --Coderjoe 00:50, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
2012 status?
Every document and note I have seen about finances was from 2011. Is there anything happening in 2012 ? DavidWhitten 20:10, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
Cloudflare?
Have you considered using Cloudflare? The basic service is free. You'd still have to run your own server, but their caching would reduce your bandwidth, so you could avoid overages or having to add more servers. It might also help protect you from spam. I haven't used it; I've just looked at their website, but it sounds interesting.
--Ppelleti 02:50, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
Never mind, it looks like you're already using Cloudflare, since I periodically get the Cloudflare error "Error 524 Ray ID: 1137acd15aaa012e A timeout occurred" when using Rosetta Code. I guess the problem is that the HTML content can't be cached, since it's dynamically generated. Some thoughts:
- I love Rosetta Code, but it's painfully slow for me, even when it doesn't time out. Could you update the Finances page for 2014 and provide some sort of "donation goal" to indicate what would be necessary to upgrade Rosetta Code to a faster host?
- You might want to consider moving the "Donate" button to a less out-of-the-way place. Maybe to the sidebar along with the G+ and Tweet buttons? It would sort of make sense there. Though you've expressed that a Donate button might be annoying, I think it's less annoying than having a really slow site.
- Maybe also consider Gittip?
- The BookLink template doesn't seem to work.
--Ppelleti (talk) 22:47, 30 March 2014 (UTC)
Gittip
I would second Ppelleti's suggestion of Gittip. Various people rave about it. https://www.gittip.com/
Clebio (talk) 10:47, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
as-a-Service
The idea of selling the content, possibly in book form, was mentioned over here: http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Rosetta_Code:Village_Pump/Income
I'd suggest that the content-as-a-service might be valuable. Specifically, I have an idea for a web app that would use RC's code samples. I've tried reaching out to Michael on Twitter. Since I can't edit his talk page (http://rosettacode.org/wiki/User_talk:Short_Circuit, as an aside, it looks like there's vandalism at the bottom of that page) and since this is potentially related to funding RC, I'm posting it here. But I'd like to discuss offline if possible. Feel free to email me.