Re: Object usage payments

["Ilya A. Volynets-Evenbakh" <ilya@total-knowledge.com>]

Alexey Parshin wrote:
> Gentlemen,
>
> It's time to discuss - how do authors may define the payment policy
> for their UMOs. I came up with the following potential policies:
>
> 1) Fixed payment. Once an author pays a UMO, he can use it in as many
> other UMOs as he needs. I doubt that is what the author of this UMO
> wants.
> 2) Fixed payment for any including of the UMO in one's UMO.
> 3) Periodic payment: same as 1) but with lease period.
> 4) Periodic payment: same as 2) but with lease period.
> 5) ?
From the original proposal:
---------------------------------------------

10. Following class creation rules are available:
    - Fully open, accept donations: anyone can create class, if donation
of minimum
        is given to author, teacher has an option to show a stamp on his
course. Not
        giving a donation will show up on course as well.
    - Fully open, don't care about money: anyone can create class, no
donation absence
         marker will be shown.
    - Payment required, perpetual: Fixed payment is made, and class
exists indefinitely
    - Payment required, periodic: Flat rate payments for defined period
of time.
    - Payment required, percentage: Percentage of teacher's income from
this class

---------------------------------------------


>
> These policies, of course, should be implemented as stored procs, so
> we can always define more. But I need to estimate at least the general
> requirements for them.
One important thing is: we do not bind payment to an UMO. Any UMO can be
included
into another one without limitations (except for limitations imposed by
kinds - can't make
a topic a part of a problem). With this in mind, you'll realize it makes
no sense to assign
payment to any UMOs besides course (which is the only non-shareable UMO
- you can't
include the course itself into anything else).
>
> It is more or less clear, that every non-free UMO should have an
> account. Such accounts would be created simultaneously with the
> payment policies. The absence of the payment policy indicates free
> object.
>
> A separate issue is a distribution schema. A payment(s) made to a UMO
> account,  eventually (or periodically) should lead to author's payments.
> After some money paid to UMO's account, how do we distribute this
> money among the authors? We can, of course, just distribute the money
> among the author(s) of top-level object. But, is it the only schema?
The issue is not distributing money between authors of UMOs (for reasons
stated above), but between authors of a course.
We need to come up with a way to let authors come up with proper
distribution of funds between each other.

>
> -- 
> Alexey Parshin,
> http://www.sptk.net 

-- 
Ilya A. Volynets-Evenbakh
Total Knowledge. CTO
http://www.total-knowledge.com