LWN status update [LWN.net]

LWN status update

Posted Jul 30, 2002 20:59 UTC (Tue) by Manny_Calavera (guest, #2846)
Parent article: LWN status update

Locking content and therefore knowledge is not what seems to be fair, especially for people living in poorer regions of the world, who want to take part in our community. I'd just pay about 10 bucks a month for nothing than getting a good news ressource. It's just about having a system that regularly grabs a fixed amount of money from your account. I think there are enough people who would pay this amount.
Some special services could be available, too:
Getting a newsletter with all the todays' headlines every day
There are sure a few others too, just be creative.
As soon as the subscriptions increase more money comes in and you can employ more reporters grabbing even more interesting linux news.
Again, i think you can make money without locking content. You just need a good payment system or many variants (paypal and so on). In Europe many people own accounts at a bank. You could add the possibility to pay automatically and regularly.
It would be nice to have a donation-o-meter which shows how much was donated and earned through paypal & co.
I hope you understand the meaning of this posting. I'm not that good at English, you know.

see you,
- Manny -

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LWN status update

Posted Jul 30, 2002 22:58 UTC (Tue) by neilbrown (subscriber, #359) [Link]

I think some level of content locking has to be considered if
a subscription model is used, but you have to keep a focus on
the purpose of locking the content. It isn't locked so the
people who don't pay don't get it, but rather so that people
who can pay will.

One idea that I like is to have a subscription target, and
whenever that target is met, the entire site is freely
available.

An extenstion of this is that new features (which imply new
costs) might have a higher target before they become freely
available.

My final thought is that when (maybe I'm being optimistic),
the site becomes over-subscribed, rebates are offered on the
next months subscription rate.