From: Tim Pierce <[email protected]> Old-To: [email protected] Subject: About Palladium's Sponsorship Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.85e Resent-Message-ID: <"TYAMp.A.zzC.WH-U1"@bl-30.rootsweb.com> To: [email protected] Resent-From: [email protected] X-Mailing-List: <[email protected]> archive/latest/6289 X-Loop: [email protected] Precedence: list Resent-Sender: [email protected] X-UIDL: fff917d4fff9e6e00baa7ef64bd36acc 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 [email protected], 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