This is a second message sent to us (listowners) and gives us a
little more insight as to this agreement between Palladium and
RootsWeb.
Again, I don't look for "bad" things to happen to our lists and the
way we function as a result of this arrangement, on the contrary,
I believe it could be beneficial.
Cal
phillipscalvin(a)prodigy.net
RootsWeb Sponsor
Listowner: CARROLL Family Discussion List
PHILLIPS Family Discussion List
----------
Date: Friday, May 08, 1998 22:02:10
From: Tim Pierce
To: listowners-L(a)rootsweb.com
Subject: About Palladium's Sponsorship
Hi, Folks --
I think a few apologies are in order.
The situation with the Palladium sponsorship has been very tricky.
Palladium wanted to keep the partnership a surprise until they
could make a formal announcement at this week's NGS conference.
So Brian was under a non-disclosure agreement to keep it under
wraps until almost the very last minute. He *couldn't* tell
anyone.
Before he left for Denver, Brian asked me to announce the
sponsorship to listowners@rootsweb, so that the listowners
wouldn't be kept out of the loop. Well, you probably noticed I
didn't do that. Between setting up the Palladium banners,
blocking attempted spam attacks, and nursing sick listservers back
to health, I just forgot that you all had to be notified. So it's
my fault that the listowners got taken by surprise. I'm awfully
sorry about that -- as someone observed, I'm a hacker, not a
communications director. Keeping *people* informed isn't my
specialty. :-)
So, down to the nitty gritty:
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN TO ROOTSWEB LISTOWNERS?
-------------------------------------------
Here's the letter from Brian that I should have posted to
listowners on the day of the announcement. This is a good summary
of the meaning of the sponsorship and its immediate impact on
listowners.
Dear RootsWeb Community,
On 1 April 1998, Palladium Interactive reinforced the contributions
of thousands of individual genealogists by becoming the sole
commercial sponsor of the oldest and largest Internet genealogical
resource: the RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative.
An *extremely* important aspect of the sponsorship is that
Palladium's commitment to RootsWeb goes far beyond simple financial
support: Palladium and RootsWeb will work together to develop an
exciting new generation of tools linking individual genealogists'
lineage databases to the myriad data resources on the Internet.
Palladium Interactive is the creator of the Ultimate Family Tree
software for genealogists, the only genealogical software that can
be used by novices but provides all the capabilities that
experienced genealogists need. UFT itself has a distinguished
lineage, being descended the widely-acclaimed Roots III and Roots
IV software packages that defined professional-grade genealogical
software more than a decade ago.
Rootsweb also traces its origins back more than a decade to the
founding of the ROOTS-L mailing list and the Roots Surname List
query system. Now with more than 300,000 users, RootsWeb currently
hosts more than 2,500 genealogical Websites and more than 3,100
mailing lists dedicated to surname and locality research. The
hosted Websites include:
* the Roots Surname List, which now includes 404,000 submissions
from 55,000 genealogists
* 40 of the 50 USGenWeb state pages and a large majority of the
3,100 county pages
* the USGenWebArchives with hundreds of megabytes of searchable data
* and hundreds of other resources
Besides ROOTS-L, RootsWeb also hosts 3,100+ other mailing lists
dedicated to the discussion of specific surnames, ethnic groups,
and geographic localities. RootsWeb's Web servers handle 1,000,000+
Web "hits" each day, and RootsWeb's list servers allow genealogists
to exchange 3,000,000+ pieces of e-mail each day.
While RootsWeb has historically been supported by thousands of
individual contributors and while individual contributions will
remain RootsWeb's mainstay, Palladium's contribution provides
RootsWeb with the ability to substantially increase the range of
resources freely available to Internet genealogists.
For example, the first two months of Palladium's sponsorship have
allowed us to add:
* A new search engine server, which has immediately made the
equivalent of 500,000 new pages of data searchable by Internet
genealogists and which will allow us to upload another 4,000,000
pages in the near future.
* A new high-capacity router, that will increase from 2,000 to 5,000
the number of genealogists who can simultaneously be use RootsWeb.
* A new mailing list archive server, which will enable genealogists
to conveniently scan the archived posts of our 3,100 mailing using
their Web browsers.
In addition to the immediate, tangible benefits of Palladium's
sponsorship, RootsWeb believes that the joint Palladium-RootsWeb
software development projects will provide much, much greater
benefits to the genealogical community. Over time we expect to see
the seamless integration of Ultimate Family Tree with the
burgeoning genealogical resources on the Internet, allowing even
novice users to easily find Internet Websites, mailing lists, and
databases where they can extend and refine their understanding of
their family's history.
On behalf of the million members of the Internet genealogical
community, RootsWeb thanks Palladium for their contributions to the
near-term needs and long-term advancement of our community.
Sincerely,
Dr. Brian Leverich
So there's the official story. As to some of the concerns that
have begun to float around:
WILL MANDATORY FEES BE IMPOSED ON LIST SUBSCRIBERS?
---------------------------------------------------
No. RootsWeb is free: it is a resource provided free of charge to
the general genealogical community. Period.
Some people have expressed worry about the phrase ``services at
minimal cost'' in Brian's letter. Minimal means zero: we will not
charge across-the-board fees to subscribe to mailing lists or run
archive searches. The reason that for emphasizing ``minimal
cost'' rather than ``no cost'' is to remind people that running
RootsWeb does cost real money, and we want to encourage as many
people as possible to become RootsWeb Members and Sponsors.
DOES THIS MEAN THAT UFT OWNS MY MAILING LIST OR MY DATA?
--------------------------------------------------------
No. Absolutely not.
Palladium's sponsorship has *no* effect whatever on RootsWeb's
relationship with the listowners or list subscribers. The terms
of the sponsorship are limited to underwriting the cost of
RootsWeb operating expenses, and funding new research projects.
There is no way that RootsWeb would enter into a commercial
partnership that would involve taking away your rights as
genealogists, listowners and RootsWeb sponsors.
RootsWeb's chief source of funding is still from individual
subscriptions. That's how Brian and Karen prefer things: it means
keeping people our highest priority, and it's the best way to
avoid compromising your interests in favor of some nameless
corporate machine. The goal here is to augment our main financial
support with a healthy partnership to produce some really powerful
genealogical tools.
Regards,
Tim Pierce
RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative
volunteer sysadmin and general hacker