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pcplantdb - Re: [pcplantdb] ibiblio - counterpoint

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  • From: John Schinnerer <john@eco-living.net>
  • To: pcplantdb@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [pcplantdb] ibiblio - counterpoint
  • Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 00:22:52 +0000

Aloha,

My perspective, on the other hand:

1) Cost, time and trouble if not on ibiblio

Compared to what? Nobody's looked anywhere else or afaik even entertained the thought of looking anywhere else for another friendly host. There are millions of hosts, and probably some stable, long-term, technically savvy academic/other entity partnerships or other sorts of "angel hosts" in those millions.

2) Its a blind alley as I see it; I can't invest a lot of trust in where the project might go/end up if we don't host on ibiblio

And I on the other hand have no reason to think that ibiblio might not also be a blind alley, a dead end. So far all I know is that it's a non-profit entity of some kind with "affiliations" and "agreements" with UNC departments. That doesn't tell me anything about its stability, funding sources, long-term funding strategy, what the binding (or not) nature of those "agreements" and "affiliations" are and so on.

I have nothing against them - I just don't know them. You say they are wonderful and will be around and stable forever, with no factual evidence provided to support such claims. I've worked in higher ed technology and one thing I learned is that there are no such guarantees. Funding comes, funding goes; agreements come, agreements go. Administrations change, priorities change. Institutions go broke; NPOs go broke; entire counties and states and countries go broke!

There is no perfect host that will last forever. Change is the only constant. If we need to change hosts, we can change hosts. It's not such a big deal. It happens quite a bit, even to major projects and organizations, and somehow nobody dies.

Not as far as I know anyhow.


--

John Schinnerer - MA, Whole Systems Design
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Whole Systems Design Services
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john@eco-living.net
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