On Thu, 14 Mar 1996 16:54:45 EST Eric Thomas said: > >As far as BITNET is concerned, while there is clearly a risk of seeing a >messy and uncoordinated shutdown, as Ulrich said it would be premature to >draw final conclusions. The vital BITNET coordination functions are >actually provided by a small group of people, currently organized under >the GUMNCC umbrella. The GUMNCC is a Terena operational task force, or >whatever the official buzzword is (Terena is the organization resulting >from the merger of EARN and RARE). CREN pays Terena/GUMNCC for its share >of this service, but the money can be found elsewhere. As CREN gets out >of the NJE business, I expect that Terena and the GUMNCC will begin >offering NJE connectivity directly to US organizations. If for whatever >reason Terena decides to shut down BITNET in Europe as well, the handful >of people that make up the GUMNCC can simply reorganize themselves >differently and provide the service anyway. All that is needed is a >billing entity, and any of the GUMNCC people's employers could arrange >that easily (assuming they want to, which is another matter, but it's not >like a simple billing issue is going to stand in the way of keeping >BITNET alive for people who still need it). On top of that, it would >probably be a lot cheaper than people are currently paying for BITNET >access. I hesitate to give figures that I know someone will later quote >against me :-), but I imagine that $500/year for one node and $1k/year >for 2-10 nodes would be sufficient to recover costs even if a lot of >sites were to leave. I don't think anyone in the US is paying less than >that currently. my intention even goes a bit further : the NJE coordination has to be free of charge for the currently paying contributors of the GUMNCC (this includes of course CREN-members) for the time after 31.12.1996. who or which organization will finally take the sponsorship, is a different issue, which doesn't need to be discussed here. i have however some difficulties in putting this proposal into wordings which are acceptable for Terena (for taking the sponsorship). > >I know that this was already tried in the past without success, but at >the time there was a rigid political infrastructure that just got in the >way. There were relationships to be preserved, and the newly formed >Terena organization was trying to organize itself and define chains of >command, etc. Terena's management ended up deciding against the proposal, >and Terena was employing most of the people in the GUMNCC, so they had to >do as Terena said. As you may know, these people were later laid off :-(, >but the upside is that the current GUMNCC is free from any such influence >:-) not yet ;-) note, that i'm currently working contracted by Terena. > So I am confident that this problem can be solved. On the other hand, >nothing ever happens overnight with Terena, so we'll have to be patient. i can only agree to eric (i'm very confident too ;-) but that's not new isn't it ;-) -ulrich- (in order to be on the safe site, i need to write the following disclaimer : this reply does NOT come from the GUMNCC management, but from Ulrich Giese, Kranenburg, Germany)