Jeremy Davis's picture

I wasn't sure whether to post this here or not but I decided what the hell!

In my travels on the net I have come across AdBard. Whilst I am generally not a big fan of advertising, this mob look promising. They claim to be "The ad network for ethical computing" and have a strict policy of only advertising "products and services which exhibit a level of commitment to free software and the free software community -- proprietary software is not welcome here." They are endorsed by the Free Software Foundation.

From what I can gather you probably aren't going to get rich having their Ads on turnkeylinux.org but it might help pay the bills, or alternatively you may be able to exchange some adspace for some TKL publicity (in the form of Ads on other FOSS sites).

Perhaps worthy of consideration?

For the record: I am in no way affiliated with AdBard or their parent company. Nor have I had any personal or professional experience with them, either purchasing Ads from them or hosting their Ads. I just like their philosophy and admire their proposal. I think they could fill an advertising niche.

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Liraz Siri's picture

Thanks for suggesting this. I wasn't previously aware of AdBard. I just took a look at the web site. Very interesting!

Currently you'll notice we don't run any advertising on the web site because we don't feel it would fit too well with the open source spirit of our project and the kind of community we are trying to build. This is especially true with regards to disruptive and distracting advertising.

OTOH, A FOSS oriented ad network is a more attractive notion. In theory the ads should be more relevant to users and come from companies that are a positive part of the open source community. Definitely something to consider.

Jeremy Davis's picture

No problem.

I 100% agree with you re advertising in general. A lot of ads, especially big ones and/or flashing ones are really offputting and in my opinion cheapen a website. I assumed that you felt similarly and thus why you didn't currently have ads. The TKL site is very professional looking and you wouldn't want to spoil it with nasty ads for MS etc (as I've seen on some other FOSS sites - not a good look).

But when I came across AdBard in my travels I thought that perhaps it doesn't need to be one way or the other, perhaps there is a middle path. If the practice lives up to the theory then it could be a really good thing for the FOSS community I think.

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