Re: associated projects selling training material

Thanks for your answer.

A good example of what you say is the Blender Foundation, that sells training material at
http://www.blender3d.org/e-shop/

Most if not all the training material included on the Blender DVDs and books are released under a copyleft CC license and with no DRM controls.

We aim for the very same model; the material would be released under a CC license and people would get sth. in return of their monetary support.
Our first training material would be a selection of very good scenes rendered with our render engine, with tutorials and making-off stuff.

Shoul I formally add my proposal to a board meeting agenda? how? What should I do to give our proposal some traction apart from posting on the mailing lists?
Thank you for your help

________________________________
De: Jimmy Kaplowitz <jimmy(at)spi-inc(dot)org>
Para: Alvaro Luna Bautista <alvarolunab(at)yahoo(dot)es>
CC: "spi-board(at)lists(dot)spi-inc(dot)org" <spi-board(at)lists(dot)spi-inc(dot)org>; "spi-general(at)lists(dot)spi-inc(dot)org" <spi-general(at)lists(dot)spi-inc(dot)org>
Enviado: martes 20 de diciembre de 2011 21:25
Asunto: Re: associated projects selling training material

Hi Alvaro,

On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 09:57:03AM +0000, Alvaro Luna Bautista wrote:
> However, the fact is that donations does not work for us. it is more dificult
> for desktop software to get support from the big guys.
[...]
> Selling training material would be an option for us. We are not sure whether
> is going to work but at least we would like to try.

Contrary to some assumptions people make, I don't think it would jeopardise our
tax status to sell YafaRay training materials. It's educational and can clearly
fall within SPI's approved exempt purposes. Many US nonprofits with the same
status do sell products, including the Free Software Foundation. We may,
however, have to do things like collect and remit sales tax at least for buyers
in certain US states
where we have sufficient ties.

We should consult our already-very-busy lawyers to learn what we'd need to do,
but there is probably a way it could be arranged if the requirements don't make
excessive demands on our limited manpower, or if more volunteers arose to
handle some of the increased workload (hint hint).

SPI does not directly use PayPal due to various concerns, but it's possible one
of our merchant accounts could be leveraged for processing sales without us
needing to handle credit card data directly. Michael as treasurer would have
the best thoughts on the mechanics of that.

- Jimmy Kaplowitz
jimmy(at)spi-inc(dot)org