On Wed, Jul 09, 2003 at 09:53:57AM -0700, steve vertigo wrote:
Many of book sellers have programs that permit an affiliate or referring site the potential to earn revenue. In general, we could sign up then include our organization ID in a link along with the ISBN. Amazon dot com is an example of this usage. Based on the experience of other sites, there shouldn't be any great income expected, but there's not much effort either. The use of this option is totally transparent to the reader or user (unless they can interpret the data passed in the URI).
Its interesting. And certainly meritous of a debate... a long, heated, debate. I like the idea, but before a commercial or semi-commercial precedent is set, there ought be some philosophical groundrules set also.
I doubt if this violates the GNU Fdl -- the material itself is not the currency exchanged. These debates, as we have many cats to herd... tend to take a while.... as they often should.
It doesn't break GFDL, but it creates unhealthy pressure and Amazon people in particular are clearly evildoers, so Wikipedia shouldn't have anything to do with them.