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=031...
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