Privacy, sponsorship, product reviews and advertising

I've included this page not just for sponsors and companies with products they'd like me to review but for all my readers also. I've tried to set out my stance on all these matters. When on the internet I value my own privacy and as a consequence of being aware of sites collecting data, I value your privacy also.

I don't have advertising on this site as often those services collect way to much info on users imho. I do have bills to pay however so if you can support this site by subscribing please do, even the free tier helps as I can show sponsors and suppliers of competitions how many readers the community is. They will never get access to your details.

TLDR;

I won't share data or accept paid articles or have my opinion swayed or paid for. There's no invasive advertising on this site, which is why supporting this site helps keep it running.

Privacy

Your privacy is important to me. I only use the inbuilt analytics of Ghost in order to watch the performance of this blog and what articles you folks like. I may in the future use Matomo on a private instance to yet again gain insight to make this site better, Matomo is a privacy based analytics tool. The data will be anonymised and only used by me. I will never pass on or sell your data to any third parties.

FAQ's

What personal information do we process? When you visit, use, or navigate our site we may log what pages you visit anonymise your IP but keep generic information such as your country of origin. If you sign up to the News Letter we will store your email address in the Ghost Pro CMS system. If you are a paid subscriber (thank you) payments are handled by stripe, they may collect other data on you, please see their terms and conditions.

Do you receive any information from third parties? No.

How do you process my information? All data is anonymised and we purely use the data to see which articles are trending to make better content for you. Data is never shared with anyone outside of PiSource.org! Data is analysed using the dashboard in Ghost CMS and potentially in the Matomo Dashboard in the future.

In what situations and with which types of parties do we share personal information? We Never Will!

How do we keep your information safe? Please refer to Ghost's Security Documents: https://ghost.org/docs/security/

What are your rights? If you wish to be deleted at any point from the database please unsubscribe and I'm also happy to confirm you have been removed by email.

How do I exercise my rights? The easiest way to exercise your rights is by unsubscribing in order be removed. If you have any other queries please email me and we'll work together.

Sponsorship

I do accept sponsorships for the site, however I will not do paid articles or guest posts, nor change my opinion on a product or service just because you are a sponsor, my readers in my opinion deserve transparency and honesty and I'd happy take on sponsors who also embody these values. I will however always be respectful about products and champion those I like whilst suggesting improvements if any are needed. Sponsorship requests should be for products and companies that that operate within Open Source and Raspberry Pi/ARM ecosystems who will genuinely interest my readers, so please be relevant. I'm a fan of supporting small/indie companies who are operating in this space.

I will also maintain a list of sponsors on the site to ensure full transparency with my audience. My stand point is that if we treat readers with respect they are more likely to do business with you.

If you'd like to sponsor the site please contact me via email on ric@pisource.org

Sponsor Vetting

I'm picky about corporate sponsors and will never promote something I feel is either a scam or wouldn't be a good value for viewers who might click through to the sponsor's link. I know there are plenty of companies who share similar values of kindness, inclusivity and acceptance of others, if this sounds like your company then let's talk.

Competition Sponsors

If you have a product you'd like to offer up for my readers to win then I'd love to hear from you. I'm happy to post articles like this for relevant products to this community and full credit you with the offer.

Winners will be contacted by me personally via email with instructions on how to get their prize.

Sponsoring a competition does not change my stance on sharing data, you won't get that here but you will get great publicity! Contact me via email if you'd like to run a competition.

Product Reviews

Most of the products I review from a software perspective are free and open source projects. I will call out if it's open core or open source, the default position is that these reviews are conducted entirely independently by me. If you do wish me to feature your product just ask and I'll be transparent when I write the review.

Hardware reviews are also welcome on this blog especially if they are relevant for Raspberry Pi or ARM based products, I'm happy to receive trial hardware to write about and we'll discuss a reasonable timeframe for me to work too. I usually have a year's worth of core articles planned ahead however there is always space for new and exciting things. I will mention in the articles when a company provides hardware for me to test.

Paid Articles / Product Showcase Articles

I will not do paid reviews of software or hardware on this blog, I feel this leads to a conflict of interest and I'd rather be genuine with my audience. I also don't accept paid showcase articles from companies.