To: [email protected] Resent-From: [email protected] X-Mailing-List: <[email protected]> archive/latest/6292 X-Loop: [email protected] Precedence: list Resent-Sender: [email protected] X-UIDL: 9fa950bba3384d9304f5dd36165b4b9f >From ROOTS COOPERATIVE This is going to be a kinda quick answer, because Karen and I wound up going to the NGS Conference to be with Palladium at the announcement. We aren't really on The Net right now and communicating is kinda a mess. The reason why we didn't warn everybody this was coming was because K & I were caught unprepared by Palladium's request that we join them at NGS and we wound up fully committed getting the new search engine online and the other servers prepped before we left. Like no time even for sleep for a few days. ): > I see in the press release below that Rootsweb has granted Palladium *sole > commercial sponsor*. I am hoping that this is simply because they are the > first, and won't be 'the' only sponsor. Palladium is literally the *sole* commercial sponsor we will accept. We have received numerous proposals in the past, but by far we felt the support Palladium offered was in the best interest of the volunteer community. The folks at Palladium are truly wonderful to work with. An *extremely* important point is that the support provided by Palladium, while substantial, is still less than the support provided by individual Members, Sponsors, and Donors. In *no* way does the sponsorship by Palladium change the way that RootsWeb will operate. Except we'll have more resources. For example, we now have a search engine server big enough to reindex your archives in part because of Palladium's support. The reason why we'll be able to add two new T1s and a third list server is because of Palladium's generosity. > The press release states below that > ">Palladium will build an Internet "spider" and search tool specifically for > >genealogists, with design and programming assistance from RootsWeb. > >Palladium will also integrate tools into its genealogy products that give > >users easy > >access to RootsWeb web sites and other related subject matter." > > This worries me more than the sponsorship. Does this search tool that > Palladium will build mean that we will have to 'purchase' their software to > use our own archives?? Note, Palladium states that it will integrate this > into 'its genealogy products'. Are these products going to be free for all > those who subscribe to Rootsweb, or cost?? Usually when a company makes a > product, they expect payment in return for the use of that said product. The spider/indexer/search engine will be freely available to everyone, like almost everything else at RootsWeb. If you happen to use the UFT software, you may be able to do some cool things like click on an individual in your database and automatically use the search engine, but you can do the same thing manually -- you just have type in your query yourself, like you currently have to do with Altavista or HotBot. > Even if Rootsweb is not selling the our lists' data, if they are granting > to Palladium the *exclusive commercial right* to sell PALLADIUM'S software > in order to *access the data* housed in the Rootsweb Archives, webpages, > etc., this grant may amount to the same thing --- costs to our lists, > listmanagers, and subscribers. I *hate* repeating myself, and I've made this remark at least a dozen times. Not only does RootsWeb promise not to sell the list archives of independent listowners, we *can't* sell them. Untangling the copyright issues is a mess nobody would want to have to deal with. I don't know quite how to respond to the rest of the paragraph, except to say that nothing at all has changed. Listowners still control whether their lists will be archived, and archives will be freely available as always. > I would really appreciate the 'true' scoop here. The silence is rather > ominous. I know other listmanagers (via private e-mail) and Rootsweb web > site managers are also questioning. The press release was a short notice, > but the 'telling' is in the detail. The true scoop is that Palladium thinks RootsWeb is helping encourage more folks to become genealogists. So, both because they're good people who want to support the volunteers and because it makes good business sense for them to help us expand the hobby, they're doing the same thing most of us have done: joined the Cooperative and put up some money so all of us can enjoy more mailing lists, more Websites, and better archive search engines. Cheers, B.