From: scoob@bnr.ca (Christian Marcotte)
Subject: Re: Charging $$$ for Archie server...
Organization: Bell-Northern Research, Ontario, Canada
Distribution: na
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1992 05:17:03 GMT

In article <1992Apr15.045436.20213@sifon.cc.mcgill.ca> peterd@cc.mcgill.ca (Peter Deutsch) writes:
[... stuff deleted ...]
>information in this manner. We still haven't convinced everyone
>that such services should be funded and we still haven't figured
>out ourselves how they can be paid for. I believe that we are now at 
>the point in the development of the Internet where this question has to 
>be addressed.

Well, all is not desperate !
UUNET is funding the development of the "cleaned up" version of CNEWS.
Maybe you could try the same.
Then there's hardware vendors like IBM, SUN, HP that could be approached
to donate archie servers to the Internet community.  It's always a good
publicity when you log on your favority archie server and it tells you
*** I am a kind donation from brand XXX manufacturer *****
(should also be sent in mail replies).

It could be very good for a manufacturer's reputation if a well known 
set of archie servers were running on their architecture.
Think of HP sparcs for instance, they could at least claim that *some*
software run on their cool hardware :-) But seriously, this lead could
be exploited.  Think of IBM who wanted to take charge of the Internet
backbone at some point.  Well, this is the kind of visibility in the
area they need.  Finally, NSFnet may be one to ask for donations.

One source of funding I raised in my previous posting was research grants.
You could try McGill, "le CRIM", CRSNG (maybe) and all the others. 
Le CRIM should DEFINITELY contribute something (at lease an archie server
to help poor quiche!!!).

>One way to support such Internet services would be for the regional and 
>midlevel service providers to fund development and deployment as part 
>of their response to their users' needs and as part of their normal
>services. The idea would be that since they are the people actually 
>charging for net access, they would have to be the people to pay for 
>service development and deployment.

>
>The obvious problem, as we see more and more commercial service
>providers coming on-line, is "why would one such provider fund a 
>service for another such provider's users?" If we ask them to fund 
>services, then we all have to accept the possibility that some
>of them will be limiting access to those services to 
>their own clients. It would be nice if we could avoid this, if 
>possible. Still limiting acess to those who pay may yet be one way we 
>do things in the end.

SCARRRY, very scary !!!!
You are one to realize how poor Universities are.  Guess who's gonna
be left out in the cold when this happens.  YES, this private network
could filter out requests originating from a competitor's network but
this is not a very nice attitude....  On the other hand, if some archie
servers come out and limit their service to those who are not their 
customers, I'LL BE THE FIRST ONE TO WRITE A FILTER TO PREVENT ANY
PACKETS EXCHANGE WITH THESE SITES FROM THE MACHINE RUNNING THE FILTER
AND BEG ALL WELL KNOW ARCHIVE SITES TO APPLY IT AND BOYCOTT THE 
ANTI SOCIAL @#%$#$%$#% OF #$%^#%$%$ THAT WOULD WANT TO USE *OUR*
EDUCATIONNAL AND OPEN COMMERCIAL ARCHIVE SITES FOR THEIR USE !!!!!!

We (the internet community) provide open services.  Users of the internet
community should not be using global resourses if they are not ready to
contribute !!!  (I guess that clearly describes my position)

>Most of those "commercial" networks currently operating archie that  
>we've asked for a license fee have agreed to pay for the next
>release and I have some hope that others will license the software and 
>offer additional services as a useful way of publicizing their 
>activities. Whether they then restrict access is going to be up to  
>them, although I obviously hope they choose not to.

I hope not too for their own good.  Maybe if you let them read a copy
of my post they will think twice before closing their door...
	
>We are deliberately 
>trying to keep our costs as low as possible so as to encourage people 
>to pay us while wearing the cost to the users. In the long run I think 
>this will lead to greater acceptance of our ideas and perhaps greater 
>sales of our software as we offer additional services.

What you may consider is to do like most software/hardware vendors and
make *BIG* educationnal discount  (read $1 licence).  After all, 
universities are *THE* biggest contributors of free software available
on the net !!!! (They have done their share, woudn't you say?)

>So why not just ask McGill to pay? Well, we can't really ask McGill to 
>pay two salaries, buy us a $30k machine, allow us to take half of their 
>bandwidth and also pay for such things as travel, etc just because we 
>have a service that everyone agrees is useful. The Canadian and Quebec 
>governments have not funded McGill to run services for the Internet, 
>and McGill wont pay this out of pocket when they face a huge 
>accumulated budget deficit. They tell me that they are just are not in 
>the Internet services business.

Agreed !!  They still can give at least one research grant for RIS!
As for the bandwith, you might consider asking CRIM to take over the
archie server or at lease subsudise it.  You should also get some
funding from the RISQ and all canadian nets since you are the 
canadian archie (of course the US should pay too but that's another story).
Provincial and Federal research grants should be awarded for this.
The US government is talking about creating super FIBER highways claiming
it's gonna do for the US economy and competitiveness what highways did after
world war two (was it two?).  These guys are serious about injecting 
$$$ in network resources.  Wouldn't you consider archie as a net resource?
I think I heard that some commitment was gonna come from Canadian gov
for the whole canadian net.  I'm sure the guys at CRIM are better versed
in all funding politics and it certainly would be a good thing to pay
them a visit (or did you do that already)  (BTW: for non montrealers,
CRIM stands for CENTRE de RECHERCHE INFORMATIQUE de MONTREAL or if
you prefer, Montreal's computer science research center)

>Now this may mean users subscribe to useful services, but you do
>that now with magazines. It may mean pay per service, but you
>do that now when you go to the movies. The idea is that we accept
>that such services don't "appear" out of thin air and we accept
>that, somewhere along the way, those who consume resources accept that
>they will be paying for them.

Well, some universities will keep having a free archie available and 
who's gonna pay to get a somewhat better service when they can get 
an adequate one for free...  (now if you were discussing about billing
the net providers, disregard my remark)

>
>Providing support services alone (answering mail, responding  to 
>postings, publicizing the service) plus designing and coding the 
>follow-on versions is really a full-time job now for several people.
>We're just getting too big to continue offering further
>development as a volunteer effort.

Well, a certain Richard Stallman would probalby disagree with you :-)
(Note that he would agree to you getting payed for writing the soft
 as long as you give it away after)

>
>Now, I think that's a pretty good bang for the buck, but it's too high 
>a price for Alan and I to continue offering on our own and McGill
>has called a halt to our devoting so much time to the project unless
>they can expect some return on any investment. 

Go to IBM, try to get hardware donations for mcgill's ARCHIE project.
I mean, IBM, DEC and the others are giving machines to universities
for high visibility projects.  Man, Archie IS high visibility.
Did you get  UNIX World, UNIX today and all the others to write papers
on you ????  Not too big an effort, they are all accessible on the net.
The worst that can happen is getting NO for answers.  That could be a
nice article:  The struggling of Internet devotees to provide free services.
Naturally McGill would be mentionned big in there and to a certain extent,
that's a payback for them.  If you get better visibility, you get better
chances of getting funds.  Any compagny that has made big donations by
then will also be mentionned ...  There *IS* hope !!!

>Because we believe in what we are doing, and because we wanted to
>continue doing it, we have elected to form a company (Bunyip 
>Information Services) and are now negotiating with McGill their  
>potential involvement. At the same time, we are actively seeking
>out other sources of funding, such as development contracts, etc.

Cygnus support does it.  They are not rich but they are getting bigger
and it will eventually pay back (especially if gcc-2.0 gets shipped
on the Solaris 2.0 CD!).  If archie does not pay directly, at least
it can get you some free publicity for your compagnie.  Unix World
would be a major plus there...

>Obviously, I would hope that our new versions have enough enhancements
>that we attract people to operate additional archie servers, tracking 
>additional kinds of information. If so, then the new company that owns 
>the righst to archie will survive and additional services will be 
>offered to the net. If we are wrong, then there will be no follow-ons 
>and we'll be looking for new jobs. Wish us luck....

I hope it works out that you can live off other contracts brought by
archie and that you can keep archie free.  I really beleive in FSF
and Cygnus approach to free software.  It works man !  Last year,
through support contract with Cygnus over a million dollars (I never
remember the exact figures) of resources were injected into very
high quality FREE software.  That's the way to go, Come on Peter,
be one of the good guys :-)

>
>				- peterd

Long live the FREE internet :-)

Good Luck with your compagny

-- Scoob

-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Christian Marcotte                Bell-Northern Research
scoob@bnr.ca                      3500 Carling Ave
Telephone: (613) 763-2782         Nepean, Ont., Canada K1Y 4H7
Newsgroups: comp.archives.admin,alt.gopher