I was passing along what was posted on a USGenWeb mail list. Please take what you hear and read with a grain of salt including what I have to say on this subject. Rootsweb is a free service no question. Always has been . Before My family/Ancestry came along rootsweb was supported by donations I would imagine that at some point the donations were not enough to cover the ever rising costs to maintain the free service at rootsweb so another way was found to support this free service My Family/Ancestry. My family inc. is in business to make money and to turn a profit and when the profit margin starts to decrease they have to find a way to generate more revenue.The way they do this is thru their customer base via a subscription service. Just take kentucky alone it has more than 100 mail lists more that 100 websites more than 100 message boards that take up valuable server space. Servers bandwith etc. are expensive to purchase and to maintain. My family has to continue to find ways to generate more revenue in order to continue to support rootsweb. This is my analogy and my analogy only but don't be surprised if someday you try to access family trees and can't do so without buying a subscription. By the way OWT is a subscription service as part of the preview service they are offering 14 months for the price of twelve. Thanks, Jim