Re: Proposal for a PostgreSQL Print Magazine

Damien,

> In particular, I think Planet PostgreSQL and the wiki are great sources
> for content. I bet that most authors will be ok to give their articles
> for free, as long as :

Oh, that's a very good idea.

>   * The magazine makes no profit from it

Actually, I think people would be OK with the magazine raising money for
pg.EU or other NGOs.

>   * The URL to the original article is provided
>   * A short bio of the author is displayed
>   * The author's employer is quoted
>   * The author can review the magazine before it's published

Speaking from experience, the last point is a really bad idea.  You'll
never get the magazine out the door.

> Hum, actually i'd be much more comfortable with very few money involved
> in this. If you pay some writers, than you need to pay them all. With

Yeah, I can see your idea now.  I think it's a good one and far more
likely to succeed.

> Also a lot images i use are free as long as the magazine stays
> non-commercial. If we include advertisings inside the magazine, then we
> can't use this pictures anymore and we'll have pay for a photo bank
> accout such as istockphoto.com with probably an unlimited reproduction
> license option that will cost a lot.

What if the magazine raises funds for an NGO?

> Of course, there's also the printing cost. I see to simple ways  to deal
> with that :

Printing costs are pretty minor.  I'd think that SPI and pg.EU could
cover them.

>> a) would take writing time away from general publications which reach
>> new users
>
> Well this depends on how you negociate with those general publications.
> In France, Guillaume writes articles for GNU/Linux mag and 6 months
> after publication, the articles are released under CC-BY-NC-SA licence,
> which means they can be reused in a free-as-beer media.

If you're reprinting Planet articles etc., this is not an issue.

>> d) currently no volunteer as editor
>
> Actually i am. Or maybe i don't understand what you mean by "editor" :)

Ah, I thought you weren't volunteering.  We'll still need vols for
language editors though.  I'm not convinced that we won't end up paying
for editorial (and design, and layout) somehow, but we can give it a
shot for at least one issue.

> Why not... i'm not sure ppl would read full articles in the PWN though.
> The mail format is not comfortable if you have to read large texts.

PWN isn't relevant now that I understand what you're proposing.


--
                                  -- Josh Berkus
                                     PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
                                     http://www.pgexperts.com