Re: Motives

From: REDROCKET <redrocket@cox.net>
Subject: Re: Motives
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 22:14:24 -0700

> My opinion is that for the most part, people on this list are very
> willing to share their "secrets."

I don't know if you are a poker player, but I would say that's a
biased estimate, because you say that based on the "secrets" being
shared openly here. You don't know how much information people are
holding to themselves. (And you also have to factor in how much crap
people are putting out.)

> I think it's just a matter of if its the Art first and then the
> commerce or the other way around?

If you start posting info on MLs or web, you'll get a lot of email
questions. You'll enjoy seeing them and feel like doing useful things
as long as you have a clear cut answer. I've got MANY questions for
which I don't have a simple answer. A classic example is where to buy
Dimezone S, salicylic acid, or even glutaraldehyde. Now anyone can buy
them from Digitaltruth or Formulary but they weren't commonly
available from those places when I published formula that used those
agents. As a result, I stopped publishing formulae that required
chemicals whose names are 6+ syllables long.

Now, some of the unpublished processing chemicals got some commercial
attention, so they are licensed to a company and they are industrially
manufactured and commercially offered for sale. I am happy, not
because of the commercialism (I'm quite opposite from it.) but because
someone else is doing the "customer service" and I only get emails of
encouragement, intellectually interesting questions, "hey, I bought
some of your chemicals and will try them soon" kind of comments, and
links to their weblogs mentioning my products, none of which would
require my painful moment to write back "Sorry, you gotta figure that
one out yourself." Although I'm still the same, mean, selfish,
unhelpful ass, I don't have to look like that any more.

In terms of "impact factor" I think licensing the formulae for
commercial products was a much better route. It's crazy to talk about
this in 2006, but the b&w darkroom chemicals are apparently selling
well, and the kind of people who wouldn't mess with bulk chemicals are
actually using them. That is, my formulae are reaching far wider range
of end users than just posting on web and MLs.

I argue that my case is art first and then the commerce, an
insignificant amount of commerce on my side at least, and also argue
that commercial route is sometimes very effective.
Received on 06/16/06-12:10:26 PM Z