Re: [school-core] Proposal for the Reorganization of Schoolforge

[Roger Dingledine <arma@mit.edu>]

On Tue, Jul 08, 2003 at 12:21:58AM -0500, Michael Viron wrote:
> 2.  You mention services and so forth, but the server providing most
> (albeit not all) resources for Schoolforge is the primary SEUL server.  Are
> we saying that member organizations that currently have arrangements with
> SEUL for free hosting would be cut off?

Seul is different from schoolforge. Projects that seul wants to host
(including schoolforge itself) won't be affected by this. We'll still
continue to offer hosting to worthwhile projects.

It's worth noting that I think David is proposing that the money be
handled solely by one of the legally recognized non-profits, such as OSEF.
(There's no reason for schoolforge itself to get into the business
or accepting, receiving, or keeping money, because it's got no legal
recognition.)

David wrote:
> >I think we could have various levels of membership as the first step toward
> >raising money. 
> >Free individual membership,
> >Full individual (paid) membership (some low fee with a few services such as a
> >login, Web space and mail)
> >Free org. membership (for deserving cases)
> >Various levels of org. membership depending on the services they request.

I think David isn't trying to come up with ways of blackmailing people
into providing money. Rather, he wants to provide incentives (rewards)
for providing money. It may well be that trying to provide an ISP-like
service (webpages, mail etc) in exchange for money is more hassle
than help, and just accepting donations (or some other reward system,
like publicity or the ability to direct the donations) works a lot
better. There's lots to learn as this progresses.

Figuring out where the money's going to come from is a critical step in
the plan, of course, along with getting a better answer for "why do we
need it and how exactly will the money get converted efficiently into
better free software/education?" It's probably not worth building a big
infrastructure until these questions are more thoroughly explored. How
much money are we talking anyway?

--Roger