Several providers have recently stopped their mailing list services and
there are a lot of orphaned lists looking for a new home. We've seen with
the GIT lists that there's a lot less free lunches than people who want
one, and I'm afraid I don't see this changing. More and more universities
seem to be asking people to please find a new home for their list, if not
right now then within the next 3-6 months. And, with a few exceptions,
the corporate sites will only sponsor lists if it somehow fits their
corporate profile. I can see car manufacturers sponsoring the Chevy
lovers list, but not a list about guinea pigs. There's actually a lot of
opportunities in that direction, but most corporations are still Internet
shy, and people don't really know where to turn. Besides, since it isn't
commonplace yet, you have to be prepared to spend a lot of energy selling
your idea to the company's PR department.
18 months ago I thought that the advent of the workstation versions of
LISTSERV would change that situation, but apparently the universities
were equally concerned about manpower as they were with mainframe cycles
(and I can't really blame them). Above all, there has been a tremendous
change in the accessibility of Internet services in the past couple
years. Two years ago, if you were leading a small charitable group and
needed a mailing list, or even (in some areas) a simple e-mail account,
the local university was pretty much your only option. Nowadays you can
buy Internet access for $20/month from dozens of service providers, so
the universities probably don't feel the same level of pressure to
provide lists for free, or at very low rates. And I can assure you that
university lawyers spend a great deal of time being concerned about
whether the university might not be construed as abusing its tax
privileges and/or subsidies competing with local businesses (apparently
you can get sued for that and lose a lot of money). So, I think the free
lunches from the universities are coming to an end. There will be plenty
of free lunches to be had from the corporate world, but you'll have to go
and get them, and argue your case fiercely, whereas the universities
would usually set up the list with minimal hassle. There will always be
lists run by people on their workstations with "look the other way"
approval from their employers, but the beneficiaries tend to be very
quiet and not invite others in on the deal :-) I think people are just
going to have to get used to the fact that the lists aren't free to run,
and that someone has got to pay for them one way or the other. This has
worked for e-mail accounts, I don't see any reason it wouldn't work for
mailing lists as long as the charges are in line with what your average
non-technical user is willing to pay for the service. L-Soft will open
its own "hobby list" service very soon, and hopefully rescue all the
lists that Netcom, Webcom and others won't run any longer. Yes, the
prices will be lower than for our business service :-) There's a lot more
orphaned lists now than when GIT dropped out, we have better technology
at our disposal, and we've invested in a big delivery server for
unrelated reasons, all in all we're operating on a larger scale with
lower costs.
Eric
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