Banner ads

[Jim Pick <jim@jimpick.com>]

Hi,

I was teaching a class on Linux today, and I pulled up the
linuxdoc.org website in order to show them where to find
documentation.

Much to my horror, I saw a banner ad at the top of the page for a
company called "3D Technology".

I couldn't believe it.  It looked like the Linux Documentation Project
had been turned into some cheesy commercial website.  I was incensed.

Now, I've taken a second look at it, and I can see that the ad is
there because 3D Technology has sponsored a prize for the logo
contest.  So I now can see that the project hasn't been hijacked.

However, I do believe that the webmaster (Poet?) has shown some
incredibly poor judgement in designing the page.  It looks cheap and
it looks like the space at the top of the page is "for sale".

Remember, this is the primary repository for documentation for the
Linux Operating System.  Linux is now officially a multi-billion
dollar industry (with the Red Hat IPO, and more to come).  If this
were a commercial website (which it isn't) - the ad space at the top
of the page would be worth many thousands of dollars a month.

I don't believe that "3D Technology" sponsoring a prize is worth the
amount of exposure that they are getting.  A small thank you in the
news items on the home page, and perhaps a larger mention on the
contest pages should be more than sufficient.

My larger concern is that the banner ad just makes the project looks
amateurish.  There's been a lot of work sunk into writing
documentation for the project over the years - all that documentation
deserves a nice looking home.

Please remove the ad.

Cheers,

 - Jim




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