[Coco] RE: [Color Computer] PDF/DjVu

Tue Jul 19 07:53:55 EDT 2005

Roger,

These are excellent questions!  Forgive me for breaking this up by
'subject', but hopefully it will read a little better.  Perhaps I have
been looking at too many magazines and secretly wish I were a publisher!! 
;)

Quick Summary
-------------
1. The cost of the "end product" will reflect only license fees and
ongoing production costs such as media and printing.  No cost will be
built in to compensate anyone (including myself) who donates time or
resources to the project.

2. As a logical extension of number one above, there will not be a
compensation model put in place to accomodate volunteers.  Any time or
resources volunteers give must be donated without any expectation of
reward or compensation.

My Story
--------
About 2 years ago I was looking at my pile of Color Computer periodicals,
books, etc and wishing that I had them archived to save them from the
ravages of time and the rigors of moving.  I researched a bit and after a
suprisingly short amount of time I found an email address for a Lawrence
T. Falk.  I sent him an electronic missive asking him if he was the owner
of the Rainbow, and if so would he be ok with my archiving and
re-distributing the magazines in electronic form.  His response was quick
and he was open to a license agreement.  I seem to remember that the price
was higher than I thought people would be willing to pay, but I don't
remember the exact cost he quoted me - I am pretty sure it was higher than
$.25 an issue.

I went out and purchased an HP Scanjet and started doing tests before I
made any promises to Lonnie or communicated to anyone else about my
intentions.  I did not want to raise expectations and fail miserably.  My
initial tests were dissapointing - I figured I would need more media than
was reasonable to be able to publish 144 or so magazines to .pdf
documents.  I spent many hours pouring over the issues and put the project
aside for a time.

Recently I joined this mailing list and saw the discussion regarding the
Rainbow and the desire to archive it.  Since I already had contacted
Lonnie once I decided to see if he was still amiable and contacted him
again.  The details of that discourse and the resulting agreement have
been fairly public since then.

Monetary Compensation
---------------------
My main motivation for doing this is to archive the Rainbow, with a strong
secondary motivation to share the end product with the community.  Lonnie
has license fees due for each copy, and I feel that materials for the
production of the end product such as DVD media and printing costs should
be included in the price, but I have no intention of adding a single cent
to the price above these costs.

I have been told that I should try to work some sort of compensation model
for my time and efforts into the price of the DVD's that are sold.  My
thinking on this is that if I do that I will also need to do that for
anyone who volunteers time or resources to the project as well.  Trying to
quantify that would be a nightmare.  How much weight would each
volunteered resource be given?  Roy has sent me (at no cost to me) two
full boxes of magazines including the entire first 4 years, Benoit has
spent hours organizing his collection of Rainbow on Disk and uploading
them to my site, etc, etc.

Since I am not going to be compensated for my time I feel it's fair to ask
the same thing of others who might be willing to volunteer.  In fact the
licensing issues makes it even more difficult to "share the load" and I
have been forced to ask for a fairly heavy committment from people willing
to scan in magazines.  Giving away free copies of the end product isn't an
easy solution.  They will need to be paid for somehow, and trying to work
the cost in for X number of free copies inflates the price of the end
product.  I am really not sure how many copies will be sold but I estimate
that I have at least 30 solid "will buys" - do I double the price of the
DVD's to allow for 30 freebies I can use as a motivation for volunteers?

After spending a lot of time speaking with colleagues, friends, and my
wife I have decided that the cost of the DVD will ONLY reflect the license
fees due Lonnie plus the "immediate and ongoing" production costs of blank
media, printing, etc.  With that firmly in mind I cannot promise
volunteers anything and I try to make it perfectly clear that if you
volunteer time or resources I will not be able to compensate you in any
way.  There has been at least one person who publically posted that they
would be willing to help by giving financially to the project - this would
be great and help to purchase things needed (disc labeler, etc), but
anything donated would go into the "black hole" of the project and
unfortunately I would not be able to pay these contributions back.  I will
definately be giving credit for everyone who contributes - no one will be
forgotten!

I realize that may limit what people are willing to contribute in time or
resources, but that's the stance I have to take or I risk dishonoring a
lot of people.

I apologize for the long post...even so I feel like I have only touched on
the issues at hand and could go on for a much longer time on many of these
issues.  In the end I have to keep an open mind about a great many things
to be able to do a good job, but some things will remain "closed" so that
other work can proceed - one of these is my stance on the decided lack of
volunteer compensation.

The only other thing I want to touch on is the trust issue.  I cannot
speak for other's motivations, but I think that any trust I may have
received in regards to this project is at least partly due to the legal
agreement I have with Lonnie Falk.  While this does not necessarily keep
me from being a jerk, it does show that I have a committment to the
success of this project.

Regards,
Michael Harwood

> Will those who volunteer their time to this project be compensated
later,
> and if so, what would 6 months of help be worth?
>
> The reason I ask is that a while back I asked to hire a person or
persons
> to help put together a C compiler for Portal-9 using source code that is
already available on the web, and I got some negative comments from
people
> who valued their time preciously and thought I was being riduculous with my
> offer.  The result of my asking for help with a C compiler was a total
failure, especially after tons of posts were made about how much minimum
wage would have added up to over X number of hours of worki.  :)
>
> Not only did all this make me feel guilty for asking for work from
people
> who Do have lives, I ended up giving up and just posting a message on
the
> web site that we do need a compiler, and I left it at that.
>
> I see that not only have you gotten impressive response for your
project,
> but people seem to trust you highly considering you're rather new here. 
One of my promises many years ago was to always give back to the CoCo
community with everything I create or ask for volunteers for, yet
my
> long-time established and solid steel presense here didn't have an
impact
> on my ability to get a single volunteer out of hundreds of onlookers.
>
> I guess my ultimate question here is: who will be lining their pockets with
> this product?  :)
>
> Anyway, my plans are to purchase this Rainbow on Disc product when it's
done.  I never owned near enough Rainbow magazines and I will definately
enjoy stepping back in time to read them.
>
> Also, how did you find and approach Lonnie Falk about this, and did anybody
> try this before and get shot down, etc.?  I think there have been
attempts
> in the past from big name CoCo users for getting something out of Lonnie
and they didn't get anywhere (to the best of my knowledge).
>
> Thanks for understanding my questions and comments,
>
>
> --
> Roger Taylor

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