[thelist] is evolt dot org shutting down?

[Mark Groen]

On March 05, 2003 at 22:53, prime at f2o.org wrote:

> I dont know what the deal is with the evolt fundraiser drive either
> 'cuz that site says they have $7000 US so I don't know why they are
> closing it but that is a lot of money
Hmmm, not really been following this thread and aardvark nor other admin has
stepped as far as I can tell so far, prolly 'cause it's close to midnight out here in
the Pacific, so let's take a guess...

How many members are there for evolt now? Gotta be well over 16K, maybe in
the mid 20's? This list-serve is by far the most heavily trafficked for my own
particular email account, and I mostly just read the stuff lately eh. Multiply that by
those 16-20K+ members and you start to add up a bit of electricity on a daily
basis, times that by 30 days in a month.

Now add in the juice required for the free databases and attendant servers for
the meo services. Okay, forgot that it's getting a bit pricey here just for the
hardware and "free" software isn't it? Thankfully in the past and present, djc and
others have contributed both, but time rolls on and hardware doesn't last forever
and you gotta upgrade.

Oh yeah, evolt.org has an invaluable public web site that gets a fair amount of
traffic too!

Methinks that of all things considered by the powers that be, that this public
traffic gets first priority in the commercial scheme of things but not by
disregarding the value of the FREE exchange of ideas among evolt members,
but by utilizing the power of the public mass available by virtue of the
membership itself. That need may over ride the desire to offer the (expensive to
maintain and free) perk of your own semi-tweakable virtual server from meo.

The public web site and mailing list count, and are not perks. They cost time and
money to maintain, and thankfully it appears that the same people that do that
appear to do double duty for both functions at various times. Whether or not they
get paid for their job is beyond this missive, but suffice to say that it costs
*something* to administer evolt.org and pay for the electricity and hardware and
the additional cost of free hosting is just a bit too much to bear obviously.

$7K does not go very far in bandwidth$, guessing just a few short months for
evolt.org. Personally, if they wanted to add a couple *quality* rotating "paid for"
links on their site or as a foot to their emails I wouldn't mind in the least, and lord
knows how many links from signatures etc. I have followed from emails to this list
and a 99% of those links have been real quality stuff.

> I moved my stuff today and got approved with a new host and its cool
> 'cuz I think their in the same town as me.
Hey, things aren't so bad after all!

gulp, hitting the send button...


Regards,

	Mark Groen

MG Web Services
Web Site Hosting and Development
www.markgroen.com
mark at markgroen.com
604-780-6917