From: c23st@kocrsv01.delcoelect.com (Spiros Triantafyllopoulos)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: who pays for USENET
Date: 25 Sep 92 21:30:26 GMT
Organization: Delco Electronics Corp.

In article <1992Sep25.172914.21475@wolves.uucp> news@wolves.uucp (The Wolfe of the Den) writes:
> [discussion about costs]
>	At a university, the end user pays (perhaps indirectly) for
>these costs, in tuition, lab use fees, parking privledge fees, lower pay
>(compared to the industrial world), and by taxes.  In other
>organizations, the end user may pay for these costs by lower salaries or
>job layoffs if the organization cannot get enough benefit from the services.
>
>	To say that something covered in the agglomeration of costs
>calle "overhead" is not recovered from the users of thoes services is to
>mis-understand the realities of how costs are recovered.  Perhaps it's
>time to take a course in basic economics or accounting.

If the word "budget" rings a bell, I'd be happy to continue discussing
the issue. In a "budget" world, there is a budget for personnel
(called personnel budget), a budget for maintenance and employe services
(cafeteria, cooler), and a budget for computing resources.

Having usenet at an organization can result in salary cuts (or less
money available for salaries) about as much as upgrading workstations
in the same organization. Both items (USENET and workstation upgrades)
come off the computing services budget of the organization, which has
little to do (within reason of course) with personnel budgets. 

I am glad you brought up the issue of cost RECOVERY, which is what
I have been supporting all along. It is easy to show cost RECOVERY
for, say, workstation upgrades because of the added productivity
they'd bring to the user community. It is (relatively) easy to show
cost RECOVERY for USENET in given cases (comp.emacs, comp.unix.programmer,
comp.whatever, sci.whatever) and harder in others (soc.culture.mutley).
In either case, the higher-ups will ask for a justification. 

Working within a given budget, a USENET-SITE-WANNABE has two choices:
one is to ask for MORE money in order to cover the added cost of
more people, resources, etc that will be needed. Another is to squeeze
its existing budget/people in order to accomodate Usenet. 

In the first case, the end user will benefit from USENET as well, (i.e.
if the computing services dept of a university gets USENET, it is
likely the rest of the university will as well), thus sharing the cost.
In the second, (probably the most popular) there is no cost increase
since other things in the budget get moved around. 

Remember, we're talking about reasonably large organizations, not Joe
Blow's Stump Removal and Unix Consulting (joe.com). Some of my arguments
will obviously be off base in a small operation. A small operation, 
however, would have even more motive to use the NET as opposed to
(say) commercial products, support, etc, hence the benefit/cost ratio
remains. (i.e. MEGACO.COM can afford support, JOE.COM can not). 

If you don't agree with the statements above, perhaps it's time to
take an advanced course in organizational accounting, cost control,
cost / profit center management, etc. 


Spiros
-- 
Spiros Triantafyllopoulos                    c23st@kocrsv01.delcoelect.com
Software Technology, Delco Electronics       striantafyll@kosds1.gm.hac.com
GM Hughes Electronics, Kokomo, IN 46904      [A Different Kind of Disclaimer]
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.sysadmin