Hi Michael, Chris and others,
Thanks Michael for doing all this research and
drafting such a careful proposal. One slight
worry I have is that any service that is for free
at the moment, like Google Groups, may not stay
for free in the future. I have set up groups on
other services, that were free in the beginning
but then at a later stage took away the best
features from the free account to put them into a
paid service. Only the very basic service
remained free. I hope Google groups (or any free
service that we may decide to join) is not going
to pull a trick like that on us.
And of course I am willing to help.
From a rainy and windy Utrecht,
Koos
At 20:34 21-8-2010, Chris Kloth wrote:
Michael, et al.
I'm coming in late, but have read all the posts to date.
Like others I want to thank you for your work on
this particular matter, as well as your list
work on behalf of all of us over the years.
I support the principles that are driving the decisions.
I lack the technical and marketplace knowledge
to assess hosting and software options - but
trust those of you engaging in that conversation.
It appears that there have been financial
pledges sufficient to support the one time
costs, but it is not clear to me how the ongoing
costs might be managed. In any case, once an
approach to funding has been arrived at I am
willing to (a) help share the load of the one
time costs in some way, and/or (b) put in my fair share of the ongoing costs.
Shalom,
Chris Kloth
Michael Herman wrote:
hello all, a bit of very important news and a
proposal for the future of the oslist.
the oslist -- in it's current form -- will
cease to exist within the next year. i have
been in contact with our boise state hosts and
with the makers of the software that drives our
list and archives. i've developed a bit of a
work-around plan (working around paying the
software company or anyone else large sums of
money annually to run the future of the
list). the softward company has confirmed for
me that this (rather non-standard use of their
software) is indeed technically
feasible. another nice thing about it is that
it makes the oslist structure look even more
like what we do in open space meetings.
the oslist at boise state is done as of june
30th 2011, they are cancelling their license
and migrating all university groups to
googlegroups. on that date, oslist will
disappear, unless we do something to move it.
IF we can find another organization to host us
as bsu has, then we can (pay someone to)
migrate our archive and user list and go on our
merry way, subject again to the whims of their IT department.
IF, instead, we choose to fund our own
implementation of the listserv (brand name)
software, we can migrate our archives and continue our conversation.
ALTERNATIVELY, or more creatively... we can
contract with l-soft directly to set-up and
maintain our archive, control that for
ourselves going forward, AND set it up in a way
that would add to the archive going forward any
postings from any other email list, like
germany, europe, australia, uk, etc. what's
more, this turns out to be the cheapest option,
because we only need to pay for listserv
software for the archiving function, rather
than for a full-blown list that will deliver to
700 people at a cost of almost $2 for EVERY
message sent to the list (this assumes we would
pay for the service rather than license and run
this for ourselves. harrison is fond of saying
that we have done all this without a marketing
department. why add an IT department now?) this is my suggestion.
and this is what i'm proposing (offering) to do now:
1. migrate all of our members to a new oslist
at googlegroups (yes, googlegroups. people who
pay attention to such things seem to prefer the
functionality there and since our list is
public anyway, there are no issues with privacy
and control of content. but we will also
archive in two other places, a gmail account
AND a listserv system that will keep adding all
new posts to the old listserv archive.)
2. migrate the archive (12 years, i think, and
on our way to 29,000 messages) to a new list
that will have only one member account.
3. make that one member account
(<mailto:[email protected]>[email protected], for
instance) a member of the new
<mailto:[email protected]>[email protected]
AND any other lists around the world. THEN set
that member account to forward everything it
receives to the migrated archive. so other
lists become like breakouts and the oslist
archive a global community record wall of what's happening.
it this way, we achieve:
1. a new, free, and durable oslist at
googlegroups, with all the bells and whistles there
2. the survival of the 29,000-message archive
in publicly-searchable perpetuity, hosted by
l-soft (makers of listserv software)
3. the addition of all new oslist and other
list postings to the central archive
what does it cost?
1. continuing the oslist conversation in a new
googlegroups oslist account costs nothing.
2. forwarding to the archive of all os
community list mail from any list, costs nothing
3. migration of the oslist archive and setup of
new archive list function costs $500
4. the cost of maintaining the archive would be $500 per year
i'd expect that $500 is fundable through
donations and could easily be handled in the
normal course of business and budgeting of the
osi-usa. i assume it's better to have a legal
entity with a standing bank account take
responsibility for it, rather than an
individual or loose group of colleagues. but
i'll leave it to osi-usa or another group to say they'll take this on.
i *think* that any other solution to this
results in one or more of the following... loss
of the archives, costs that run to $3000 or
$4000 annually (and are totally variable based
on list size), reliance on volunteer community
members to be our global IT department,
additional cost of paying community members to
admin the system, reliance on the goodwill of
some other organization (which might be
generous initially but could pull the plug with
less warning than we've been given now), no
ability to archive many lists in our one online record.
i will check with boise state to confirm their
support for our migration. i'm told by l-soft
that migrating the archive to a new location/list is pretty simple stuff.
i'm willing to implement this, but not fund
it. i'd like at least four others to sign on
as stewards of the shift. more would be
fine. and i hope osi-usa will be the official
steward for donations/funding matters.
i don't have time right now to discuss this
with 700 subscribers. i'm just one guy, one
list member. this is just my personal
recommendation and proposal. BUT... if there
are concerns about any of this, i'm glad to try
to keep up with clarifying questions.
if you think this is a good way to proceed,
please say so. if you have something to
contribute to the process (time, attention,
money, etc) please say so. if you have
concerns, let's hear them, too -- BUT if you
think we shouldn't do something in this
proposal, then bring your own suggestions and
proposals for what we should do instead, making
sure that the solution as modified (or
replaced) is still complete (technically, financially, etc.).
since we don't have anything to discuss about
IF we should move or really even WHEN we should
move, the only question is HOW to preserve the
archive and WHERE to continue the main conversation.
ideally, this would all happen when things
quiet down a bit at the end of the year, mid-
to late-december. that's when i would be most
able to support these things. anyone else
could do it sooner or later, but i do think
that distinguishing our two tasks, maintaining
the archive AND continuing the conversation, is
a valuable way to think about this now.
what can you contribute to this (new) beginning?
m
--
Michael Herman
Michael Herman Associates
<http://MichaelHerman.com>http://MichaelHerman.com
http://RonanParkTrail.com
<http://ManorNeighbors.com>http://ManorNeighbors.com
http://ChicagoConservationCorps.org
<http://OpenSpaceWorld.org>http://OpenSpaceWorld.org
312-280-7838 (mobile)
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