pcplantdb

[John Schinnerer <john@eco-living.net>]

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
------------------------------------------
- Eco-Living -
Whole Systems Design Services
People - Place - Learning - Integration
john@eco-living.net
http://eco-living.net