Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
I don't understand you. Supporting evildoers by
sending
clients to them is not a good thing to do.
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Booksources&isbn=03…
We already list Amazon and several others, and we've consciously made
the choice not to boycott anyone or have any particular editorial
policy on this. I think that's the right thing to do, because it's
really outside our mission to make controversial political statements
about booksellers.
We let the end user decide, and wash our hands of the matter.
So this does raise the natural question: if we're sending people to
Amazon anyway, is there any reason we should not accept a commission
for doing it?
If you think they are not evildoers, then there seems to be no
problem. If you think that they *are* evildoers, then at least this
will help to reduce their profits.
<personal opinion>
My own personal opinion: I'm not happy with some of the things that
Amazon has done, but I'm also a very satisfied customer, and I shop
there regularly. I think that the charge of 'evildoer' is overblown.
I was just reading this history of Rwanda, with 800,000 dead due to
genocide. That's evil. Amazon filing stupid patents, well, it's
stupid and I don't like it, but we do need to keep some perspective.
</personal opinion>
Anyhow, I think it's an open question now that we've got a foundation,
whether we should take advantage of revenue opportunities like this.
See, here's the thing: a nonprofit organization has a moral
obligation, I think, to be a good steward of the funds donated to it.
People aren't donating money to us to engage in a hopeless boycott
against Amazon.
In the past, when I was the only financial patron, our only financial
responsibility was to make me happy. And I was totally happy. Still
am. :-) So, if it was just me paying all the bills, I'd say, sure,
let's skip the Amazon money if it upsets a few people, because I'm all
about harmony, and I'll just buy the new server and pay for all the
bandwidth myself, and not worry much about it.
But if people are going to be signing up to give us $20 or $2, then we
should really think about maximizing our use of those funds *for our
mission*. That's a responsibility that we have to people who donate
money.
--Jimbo