(resend)
I, Bob Allisat, wrote:
> Using FCN as my example we are a not for profit endeavor. It is not
> possible for a commercial venture to register our domains because it
> violates our basic premise: that our work is charitable, we do not
> have Ad banners, we do not make money or promote anyone who makes
> money off of our site. So automatically name.spaces or any other
> for-profit company is out of the running.
Greg Skinner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> replied:
= Suppose a for-profit company would offer to share your registry
= as part of their community service. Would you still refuse their
= contributions? What if your users actually benefitted from their
= service (e.g. suppose you go belly-up like ml.org did and the
= for-profit company can continue to provide service until a new
= non-profit org can take over)?
FCN has been very honest and welcoming with *all* our
contributions and contributors. Fact is that FCN has
had to say "No thank you" to more offers than we have
accepted. This has been very hard for a service such as
ours. In the end our perseverance has paid off with
significant contributions from folks we continue to
hold in the highest regard. From folks that respect our
integrity as we in return repect theirs. Many thanks!
As for what happens if we could not continue our service
we are working to prevent this outcome. With more generous
support we will be able to continue indefinately. An
interesting angle on this discussion might be what would
happen if an other-wise healthy non-profit group where
to be completely dependant upon a commercial service that
would in turn go out of business. As much a problem as an
insolvent charity is an insolvent business.
Which is why we continue to cultivate both our independance
*and* as many mutually creative and constructive relationships
as possible outside FCN. We seek many alliances and supporters
while simultaneously preserving our independance. It has been
a difficult balance I believe we have been successful in
maintaining.
Chris Ambler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> continues on Greg's thought:
+ Image Online Design offered ml.org services at no cost whatsoever.
+ If nothing else, it would have been a valuable test of the IOD
+ system in a real-world scenario. IOD was turned down.
+
+ The offer would be just as possible to .FCN, if Bob wanted to
+ take IOD up on it.
Roeland Meyer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> comments:
< I believe that there are many for-profits that wouldn't mind doing
< a certain amount of such pro bono work. It increases traffic to the
< web-site, if nothing else, and also provides scale testing of the
< systems.
First let me say I do not wish in my previous comments to
imply IODesign or MHSC.COM would not be reliable partners.
Indeed the contrary is true and I'll take Chris up on
his direct offer and pose Roeland a response to his oblique
one. With simple turns reflecting our actual needs as a
free service. Courtesy FCN's generous supporters FCN is
now wholey situated on a very well equipped server. FCN's
Technology man Gard Abrahamsen is finishing our WWW browser
based registration software and for various reasons we'll
continue to situate this function on our current server.
The code is being developed for open source, public release
and our existing server is therefore as much a public
resource as a test platform.
The problem is our FCN's connectivity - an ISDN line "as
many hops from the backbone as humanly possible" quoting Gard.
And this is where perhaps ya'll could assist us - we'd like
to move the other functions of FCN over to other sites to
reduce the load on the registration server. And develop new
services and functions including our existing WWW contents
(education, activism, archives, etc.), new mailing lists and
so on. If any IOD, MHSC or other interested groups would
like to help FCN we need additional fairly robust server
support. We also have various other hardware and software
requirements also open for off-list discussion.
I'd like to thank Roeland, Chris and Greg and other members of
these various lists for their kind consideration of FCN regardless.
I look forward to all of your comments, replies or contributions.
Respectfully,
Bob Allisat
Free Community Network _ [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://fcn.net _ http://fcn.net/allisat
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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