offroadgeek: I\'m a bit confused by your matter-of-course willingness to purchase the license. $200 certainly means different things to different people yet I would expect extensive nagging for donations when discussing a matter of such obvious \"public benefit\". Perhaps it\'s just my kuro5hin experience speaking :-) . And perhaps $200 gets lost in your regular hosting costs?
Shame my country is still off limits to PayPal...
z.
You\'re right... $200 is a good chunk of money to spend on this, but I do really feel that it\'s worth it to get the many benefits the new forum would provide to our community.
Regarding the donations, I don\'t ever want to nag the community for donations. I figure that people will donate when they are able to.
Also, the google ads are providing to be somewhat helpful. In the three weeks since I first added the ads to the current forum, it\'s generated about $84. Now that\'s not nearly enough to cover the costs of hosting, but it\'s a step in the right direction.
I would rather see people support the zug by clicking on a few ads regularly (clicking thru two or so links is helpful) than donating their own $$.
I\'m also planning on providing regular monthly reports on the ZUG showing the hosting costs, and the advertising revenue. The goal is to obviously get the hosting costs completely covered, and any extra $$ made would go back into the community in the form of development efforts (donations to developers for specific tasks) and/or providing needed hardware to development efforts.