Friday, January 02, 2004
I'm building a server and I want to maintain it and fund it as a co-op. What do I mean? I want to colocate the server and I want to make space/bandwidth available to anyone who is willing to kick in a little money to cover expenses. This is not intended to be a money making venture. I have the expertise to maintain a public server like this.
I need space and bandwidth.
(If) You need space and bandwidth. Let's pool our resources.
This could be very cheap. I'm hoping that this can work out us all chipping in a very small amount of money (significantly less than $100.00 a year, and maybe as little as $10 - $20) for more bandwidth and storage space than any of us need. How would this work? You contact me and let me know that you're interested.
I collect names and email addresses. Hopefully this list grows as I build the server and prep to deploy it.
I contact everyone on my list with an outlook that describes among other important information:
the number of participants,
the buy in amount, and my opinion of the likehood that this will be a success. What does that mean? Number of participants is fairly obvious. This is just a number of people who are willing to participate. This number will have a cap. That cap will be dictated by all of the factors that make this idea possible in the first place, including primarily technical factors. The server will be open to as many people as we can support. The more people involved, the lower the costs for everyone. This number will not exceed the amount of people we can responsibly support. This is a co-op for people with small to mid level needs. We will not be able to accomodate people with a lot of traffic. This server is primarily intended to house small and growing weblogs. There will be some limit on the amount of traffic we'll be able to tolerate from any single site. If your site grows beyond this level then congratulations, we'll be happy to help you migrate your web presence to someplace more appropriate. I'm not anticipating that there will ever be a limit on the amount of storage space available to individual sites... well, if there is it will be measured in GBs or better. "Buy in amount" is the amount of money it costs to buy into the co-op or renew. This number may and probably will flutuate. There will be a set initial amount. This amount could go up or could go down based on the number of participants, maintenance costs, colocation fees. Regardless it will be reasonable for everyone. This is fair to my way to thinking and there will not be any refunds or any other settlement of any kind in the event that the buy in price is ever less or more than you may pay. That's all just too complicated. You should be comfortable paying a fair price.
The price you pay here will be substantially less than what you pay anywhere else.
And no one is making a profit on this. There will also be no refunds. Again, this is just too complicated. The buy in price will always cover 1 years membership, from the date of payment. At the end of the year you will have the option to renew at the then current rate. If the service folds, no money can be refunded. Which brings me to my "opinion of the likehood that this will be a success". I will publish an indication or score of the likelihood that I think the service will last out the current year based on number of participants, price/terms we're operating under from our colocation provider and many other factors. This is not a gaurentee, it's just an attempt at an honest evaluation to help you if you're deciding whether or not you want to participate. This value will be updated frequently and will serve as an indication of the health and survivability of the co-op. There will be some preferential treatment given to founding members. This seems only fair given that there is some greater burden of risk. This may be as simpe as a t-shirt or some indication of founding status. It could also be more significant... maybe discounted renewal rates or something similar. The server itself will be colocated at a facility in/around Boston, MA. The server, and your data, will be secure, backed up, free of prolonged or frequent outages, and everything else that means good. I will make details available as I get closer to choosing a provider. I'll look for help from a number of "admins" who will all assist in looking after the health, security and general welfar of the server and the effort. No one will be paid and everyone will be expected to kick in their money as a member of the community, including me of course. I'm not expecting this to be a demanding job. It will require several people however to adequately cover vacations, sickness, general unavailability etc. The idea will be to make sure that someone is always available who can quickly respond to an issue should anything come up. I'm anticipating that this will be a very small number. We'll add only as necessary. For ex. If there is ever a time when there threatens to be a gap in coverage will look for another admin who can cover that gap. That person will remain an "admin" from that point forward, unless they opt out or are removed from that position for some other reason, such as inappropriate conduct (like purposefully harming the community in some real way or not renewing for example). I would like to grow services around this co-op including maybe a mail server, discussion boards, .ics calendar hosting etc. My hope is that this develops into a real community. I specifically want to avoid this being demanding or costly for anyone. I want this to be as easy and informal as it possibly can be. I think this is a good and necessary idea.
If you think this is a good idea then we have the same good idea.
let's pursue it together. co·op·er·a·tive P Pronunciation Key (k-pr--tv, --rtv, -pr-)
adj.
Done in cooperation with others: a cooperative effort.
Marked by willingness to cooperate; compliant: a cooperative patient.
Of, relating to, or formed as an enterprise or organization jointly owned or managed by those who use its facilities or services: a cooperative department store; cooperative apartment buildings.
n.
An enterprise or organization that is owned or managed jointly by those who use its facilities or services.
2:17:58 PM
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