[Foundation-l] fundraising

[Anthony DiPierro]

On 6/11/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/11/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> > Has any thought gone into producing printed materials (either on CD or
> > even dead tree format) for high quality materials derived from Wikimedia
> > project pages?
>
> I fear that printed material like this is of sufficiently low margin
> as to not be a very effective fundraising activity.  The costs
> involved in producing high-quality printed material are substantial.
> Sadly, the quality of product produced by the vanity presses (like
> Lulu) is not very high, and I fear that it would do us a disservice.
> (I have the same concern regarding the merchandise we sell through
> Cafe Press.)
>
> Kelly

I think CDs and/or DVDs would make a good "thank you" gift for
donators.  Wikimedia might even get someone to donate the cost of
physically producing the CDs/DVDs.  In that sense I think it'd
increase the amount of donations.  I always used to buy my FreeBSD
install CDs directly from freebsd.org rather than from Cheapbytes
(back before *BSD died :), and I think a lot of people do that kind of
thing.

The real issue I think would be the legal can of worms it would open.
Better for Wikimedia to license its copyrights and trademarks to a
third party (on a $ per copy basis) and let them sell the
CDs/DVDs/print versions?/etc.