On Wed, 22 Feb 1995, SHIRLEY VARMETTE - SOCIOLOGY wrote:
> I would certainly support thisidea....certainly it is a positive suggestion.
> My list (smldog-l) certainly has not gotten any offers to "come on over."
> I have certainly learned a lot over the past 10 days, and have gotten some
> comments from my list members that they will make contributions if that is
> what it comes down to.
I took this idea into a meeting this afternoon with my Director and
a few of our site managers. I explained the number of requests from the
'soon to be homeless' and outlined the problems with Interbit, etc.
(Actually, I have every request on this topic in a folder and printed
it for them :-))
We are a rather new listserv site and are not congested with a lot
of local lists yet. For local use, to cover the cost of yearly maint
with LSOFT as well as the purchase of another 3 gig disk, we will be
implimenting (we have to :-() a fee for listserv lists in the near
future. My request was if we could extend the same offer to some
of you who have requested homes for your lists. My Director said
that as long as we would not also have to become the list-owners
and manage the lists that we could extend the offer. Since charging a fee
even locally is rather new to us, we are obtaining estimates from our
sales person at Auspex...(and this is also why I haven't gotten back
to those I have recently exchanged e-mail with regarding hosting your
lists....I just found out we were going to start charging in the
future and it didn't seem fair to make an offer now for free only to
charge next month.) Personally, I don't like the idea of charging...
but as someone said recently, its time has come.
At any rate, if anyone is interested please drop me a note and I will
collect your e-mail addresses and get back to you with what we would
have to charge....I know based on last Nov. 1994's estimates of a 3 GB
disk we bought (its almost gone!) the price was $5,515.50 with a
resulting cost of approx. $2.00 Cnd per MB for disk space that would
be added on for those who want archiving for their lists. Obviously
the more lists we host the cheaper the cost since we are not
permitted to make a profit and have no desire to do so. Although one
person who e-mailed me suggested keeping a 1 MB limit and ftp'ing
archives..and that is certainly doable.
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. 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.. we would like to avoid reinbursing list-owners.
Since I personally dislike the idea of charging there is another
alternative that could keep costs down. I'm really brainstorming
here so don't flame me. :-) 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. 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. :-)
I know our site might be willing to participate in such an
adventure if costs are as low as we would charge..and with the
volume it just might be. This would eliminate any pressure on
LSOFT to purchase any machines for providing listserv services....
and this also assumes, I fear, that there is no greed involved.
I guess I like others tend to equate LSOFT with only Eric, and I
know Eric isn't out to screw anyone because he refused my offer to
do some work for LSOFT for free in the past...but if all the 'owners'
or 'shareholders' involved in the decision making process for LSOFT
were to agree...we could really help out a lot of people and keep costs
down.
In closing, as one of the people at the meeting stated it, "We
wouldn't want to see any homeless on the information hiway, we see
enough on our streets so lets help out if we can". (I just had to
quote that! ) Cheers! --Trish
---
Trish Forrest
Computing Services
University of windsor
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