On Thu, 23 Feb 1995 22:06:10 -0500 Trish Forrest
<[log in to unmask]> said:
> Before we can officially make such an offer I have to check two things
>out. First, if charging would violate our Internet provider's policy.
>Since the fee would not result in a profit and since we are not a
>commercial site, I don't think it will.
Actually, if I were an Internet service provider I would be very worried
about customers reselling services on a NON-PROFIT basis :-)
>Second, I guess I need Eric to tell me that this wouldn't violate
>LSOFT's agreement with us. I think we can charge locally, but I just
>want to make sure that we can offer the same fee to other
>Bitnet/Internet sites to cover costs with no profit..
I don't think it would violate your agreement, which was drafted on the
assumption that you were not a service provider and, being a university,
had no intention of becoming one (we have a different agreement for
service providers). We define a service provider as someone selling lists
to the general public. If anyone (or possibly anyone in a certain country
or geographical area) can call you and get a list about any topic they
care to name (with the possible exclusion of obscenity and the like), we
would consider you a service provider. If you restrict the service to
members of a particular association, profession, etc, or if you review
the topic before agreeing to provide the service, we wouldn't consider
you a service provider. Hardware and software cost money and it is normal
for computing centres to charge back somehow. We have a different price
schedule for service providers, though.
>We, like some other sites purchase Listserv from LSOFT...now if LSOFT
>was willing to make an agreement of, for example, using us and other
>sites willing to participate, as their servers for hosting lists and
>compensating us for disksp
>+ maint fees...we could take on the homeless.
Well, we're already having a hard time explaining to corporate customers
that we can't guarantee a certain degree of availability of the service
because we have no control whatsoever over the Internet and the best we
could do is make an arrangement with our service provider which would
only cover our link to their main office and possibly their link to the
backbone, and anything beyond that is totally out of anyone's control.
It's much simpler and more convenient for everyone if we run the machines
ourselves. There isn't really any advantage for us or for the customer to
have to involve a third party in the operational chain.
>This way, LSOFT would make any profit and no would have to worry about
>making a profit that might violate their Internet Provider's Policy. :-)
Being an evil for-profit corporation, we don't get the academic discounts
that come with these restrictions :-) In fact I suspect that *you* would
be in trouble if you helped us implement a for-profit service, because
you are (I assume) a tax free organization.
>This would eliminate any pressure on LSOFT to purchase any machines for
>providing listserv services....
But we've already bought them! And besides, the bulk of the cost is in
manpower. We recently bought a brand X workstation that has already cost
as much in manpower for installation and various troubleshooting and bug
reporting as we paid for it. And for the PCs, it's something we simply
take for granted. So far the PC servers have cost about twice their
purchase price in manpower, and yes I mean both the NT and unix ones. The
NT PCs required a lot of work to set up right because of all the
brain-damaged WfW considerations and the fact that the people who use WfW
think the NT PCs are normal PCs like their own and can/should be treated
as such. The unix PCs while shielded from this do think up new problems
every day with an amazing level of creativity.
Eric
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