Not against profit,or helping others,but I will dictate the terms of MY files and to whom I help.R ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ray W. Justus" <rwjustus@uswest.net> To: <PABRADFO-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Friday, May 19, 2000 22 10 PM Subject: [PABRADFO] Hijacked? > Please understand that my comments that follow are in no way meant to be > disrespectful to anyone. They are intended to make you think. My wife and > I have been serious, amateur genealogists for about twenty-six years. We > have shared our information with people all over the world. We have seen > some of it on the websites of distant relatives. We have never asked for or > received any money for the use of our information. > > When we first bought Family Tree Maker and migrated our data to it about > five years ago, I submitted our tree. I have never regretted this. Because > of that single submission, we have been contacted by several dozen relatives > who have helped us greatly extended our tree. When I submitted it, I > believe there were about 10,700 names in it. Today, we have just passed the > 63,000 mark. Every entry was done by hand. I tried merging once and ended > up with quite a mess. Fortunately, I made a backup before that aborted > attempt. > > I have purchased three Super Bundles from Family Tree Maker. In the third > bundle, we noticed a significant amount of repeats so we haven't purchased > any more and instead invested our money in other types of genealogical CD's. > Most of the World Family Tree CD's contain approximately 3,000 trees. A > super bundle of five costs $60. That works out to 0.4¢ per tree. For every > 10,000 copies of my tree that Family Tree Maker sells, they take in $200 > before expenses. Do you think they've sold 10,000 copies of my tree? > > I've gotten more than that out of GenForum alone. I realize Family Tree > Maker provides GenForum at no cost to draw in more customers but what's > wrong with that? If we work for ourselves, we expect to make a profit. If > we work for someone else, we hope our boss makes a profit. We live in the > richest nation in the world because of the profit motive. Why, day after > day, do we hear complaining about someone making money? > > A couple of parting thoughts: How do you measure the value of all the > contacts you have made because your information is out there for everyone to > see? If you decide to write a book about your family and sell it, how much > will you give to each of your cousins for their contribution? > > My 2¢ > > Ray Justus > Chandler, AZ > > >