Posted by ericG on September 22, 2008 at 5:50pm
Hey folks, sorry it took me a week to get this done, but here are the final financial figures on this past Drupal Camp.
Donations: total $1,500
(donations from hostmysite.com; Platypus Theory; Mansueto Ventures; Democracy In Action; Mayfirst/PeopleLink; APS Physics; Openflows Community Technology Lab)
Left over funds from DrupalCamp NYC 4: $182.22
Total Expenses: $1,684,26
more detailed list of expenses in the attached OpenOffice spreadsheet.
Thanks to everyone that made the event possible!
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| drupalcamp5_finances.ods | 18.15 KB |
Comments
Thanks for dealing with the
Thanks for dealing with the finances Eric! Not a fun job...
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Formatting
Can someone please put that in xls format for those of us who are slaves to the man and have excel?
Mike
be a slave no more!
download OpenOffice.org, it's free (as in beer and speech)
;)
While Open Office does have
While Open Office does have it's own format, I know for a fact that they do allow users to save documents as an xls file, an industry standard for spreadsheets. This is so Open Office users can open excel files, and can send files to users who use Excel. Don't you want to be standards compliant so EVERYONE can read your file, and not just those using Open Office?
Mike
Don't you want to be
OpenDocument is actually the standard. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument#Standardization. It is Microsoft Office that refuses to read/write in standard file formats.
The French think Jerry Lewis
The French think Jerry Lewis is funny, but it doesn't mean that they're right. Most people use MS Windows, MS Office, and even gasp Internet Explorer.
Don't believe me?
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
Linux and Mac, Open Office and Firefox may be "better", in your mind, but they're not the de facto standard, never have been, and it will be a long time before they are, if ever. So this, just like IE6 debugging, may be a pain, but it's something you gotta do.
Mike
seriously. stop this now
seriously. stop this now please. pointless debate. jsut get open office and be done with this. this community is all about supporting open source. so lets practice what we preach.
------------------
Sometimes interesting things appears on http://litwol.com
I also feel that I shouldn't
I also feel that I shouldn't be forced to download and install any piece of software, regardless of what the software costs.
even flash?
I tend to agree with that sentiment, but Flash would be the best example of this expectation being normal. You choose either to lose access to all of the great flash content, or install software that isn't free.
Flash Player also isn't 127
Flash Player also isn't 127 Megs just to open a spreadsheet, when I already have a perfectly good spreadsheet program that came with my computer at work.
But you're actually wrong about your statement. I don't need to install Adobe Flash to view flash files, only to create fla file and convert them to swf. To view flash, I only need a flash PLAYER.
You are right, I meant Flash
You are right, I meant Flash player, which is still not free software, and I am still expected to download it or lose access to content. We aren't the first people on the internet that are asking that you download something to get access to content.
Also this isn't about the size of the download, its about supporting open formats. Open Office, while being great, isn't the only way to look at spreadsheets in open non-proprietary formats.
Try GNumeric for Windows, that's only 13 MB to download.
Also, Google Docs actually supports most (if not all) of the open document formats. It will also export to proprietary formats if you must have them. There's no download involved there.
use what you want
you are certainly free to ask microsoft to start supporting Open Document Formats. At some point they will simply because so many municipalities and governments are passing rules concerning the use of publicly published and open standards for documents.
you can also use http://media-convert.com/convert/index.php to convert the document to microsoft format or get one of the tools that allows your proprietary application to use open standards.
I am not forcing you to use closed tools, but I also don't see why you should expect the community to standardize on closed formats.
Openness is in the eye of the beholder?
I think the attitude that anyone who, for whatever reason, doesn't want to go 100% open-source, all the time, can just lump it is exactly what is preventing open-source from being more widely adopted more quickly! It is anything but an open, community-building attitude, but unfortunately it seems to be a rather common one in the Drupal arena.
Almost anyone can use an .xls format file whether they use Excel or not, making people download and convert things is a very "closed" and non-user-friendly approach. How hard is it to do a "save as"?
Jean Gazis
www.jeangazis.com
www.webhostny.com
Jean Gazis
www.jeangazis.com
www.webhostny.com
if you must have xls
I use Free Software and believe that for archival purposes Open Document Formats are a necessity.
If I was communicating with a client, I would start by asking for them to use open document formats, and then if they hesitate I will export documents in closed formats. I don't see why I should be forced to make that compromise here.
Can't you just upload the document to googledocs and export it as xls if you want to?
This is one of those practice what you preach moments. If my stubbornness gets even one more user to move to Open Document Formats and Free Software tools, I consider that a success in community-building.
I really think that this is being made into far larger of an issue than it is. There are any number of ways that anyone that wants to can read/review the document. The goal of financial transparency has been met.
Well said, Eric
Well said, Eric.
I do the same thing--first I ask someone if they can work with open formats like ODF, and if they resist, then I'll send files in the legacy format. It's not helpful to my case to push someone too hard, but it also feels like cowardice to simply not make any effort and instead automatically use xls or doc for every file. As for my own data, I don't trust those legacy formats to be readable in the future and thus I won't save my information in them, for fear of greater future hassles.
Doing this, I have found a much larger number of people are ODF-capable than I would have guessed. And many people are interested in learning more about both OpenOffice and ODF when they learn of their existence.
I'd say it has been a success, and I will continue with this method in the future.
I'll put it simply
I'll put it simply, and I will say no more on this subject. As I paid for lunch on Sunday, have a line item in that document, and thus a vested interest in that document, I'm a client in this sense. I asked for a closed format and you wasted my time by insighting an argument about this. If I send my client a document in a format that they can't open, I apologize for the inconvenience, and convert it to whatever format and standards THEY use. THEY'RE the client and are the ones PAYING for that document. It doesn't matter if they communicate using smoke signals. The client's needs come first, before your own self righteousness and stubbornness. Now I'm not telling you how to run your business, but I, as a client, shouldn't feel like my time is being wasted.
Mike
who paid for the document
I agree with you on a couple points. First, we can agree that someone's time is being wasted here, although we disagree on who that is. Second, the folks that paid for the document to be produced can tell me what to do. oh, right... no one paid for that document to be produced.
It is rare that an event like this publicly posts the financial details. My goal is to set a certain standard for future events, I am simply following the example that Jacob set when he organized DrupalCamp3. You seem to feel entitled to my time because you sponsored the event. You want me to act as if you paid me to organize the camp.
I find it rather disturbing that someone that runs a company that specializes in a Free Software tool like drupal would demand use of closed formats
From my perspective, you are a member of this community (and have been for years), as such I expect a certain level of respect towards those that volunteer to handle the crappy jobs. I would expect that as a member of the community, you would gladly volunteer to convert the documents to the format you want instead of making demands of others.
if you must have xls
How do you know that stubbornness gets anyone to convert, let alone that it wins more converts than non-stubbornness? You catch more flies with honey, after all.
Jean Gazis
www.jeangazis.com
www.webhostny.com
Jean Gazis
www.jeangazis.com
www.webhostny.com
a fair point
you make a reasonable point, and I have to admit that my stubbornness is flexible depending on the context.
If I am dealing with a novice computer user, or someone at an organization with hundreds of legal copies of Microsoft Office, I tend to be very flexible.
In this context however, I am not flexible at all -- Someone that has been part of this Free Software community for years, who runs a "Drupal Shop," is not going to get any flexibility from me in regards to using open document formats. Sometimes it's best to bait the fly trap with vinegar.
Thanks for the conversion site.
Thanks for the conversion site. Attached, for those who have don't have Open Office, and also for those that do, is an xls of the finances for Drupal Camp.
Mike
excellent
thanks for uploading the converted document.
I second that!
I second that!
Not an either or situation
This should not be an either/or (take it or leave it) situation.
Just like like the open-source advocates don't want to be forced to use a proprietary format, the commercial software users don't want to be forced to use a format either.
Since open-office can create both with very little effort, why not just make BOTH available and let the user select the one that makes them happy.
Open source is about helping people and making things easier by giving them choices, not beating them into submission.
force
Since there are very simple, web accessible ways to convert from Open Document Format to microsoft format (a quick trip to the search engine of your choice will give you many options), it seems to me that this is not an issue of me forcing anything on anyone, but rather it is an issue of someone trying to force a volunteer organizer to do something.
In the context of this Free Software community, I think it is reasonable that we share data in open formats.
force?
Someone made a simple request for another file format. Construing that as "forcing" the group to do anything seems more than a little, er, forced, if you ask me. (Not that anyone did.) Frankly, I wonder if someone else had made the same request whether it would have gotten the same reaction.
This ISN'T an open-source evangelism group. It's a group for people in the NYC area who want to use Drupal. Period. What else they may or may not use is off-topic.
Jean Gazis
www.jeangazis.com
www.webhostny.com
Jean Gazis
www.jeangazis.com
www.webhostny.com
Can someone convert this to Apple Numbers format?
For us Mac users, can someone convert this to a Numbers file? ;-)
Don't leave out C/PM...
While we're on it, I'd like to read the file on my old C/PM. Could you convert it to CalcStar?
Aaron Winborn
Drupal Multimedia (book, in October!)
AaronWinborn.com (blog)
Advomatic (work)
Aaron Winborn
Drupal Multimedia (my book, available now!)
AaronWinborn.com
Advomatic
Not Numbers or CalcStar
But this should work for all.
Tried loading a csv file too, but the file attachment filter didn't like it.
And it's open source too!
What About TRS-80 and VIC-20??
The TRS-80 and VIC-20 folks might be out of luck, though...no browsers, Excel or OpenOffice... ;-)
(PS: I joke about Numbers...it can read .xls files just fine! I do hope they support ODF in the 09 version, though.)