Helen and Diane, Here another post from the other list by the founder of Rootsweb. Al ---------- >Having signed the contract, I'm kinda aware of the details. ;) > >There was no requirement that RootsWeb stay free or persist in >perpetuity. > >On a practical level, though, we certainly expected that. The user- >provided RootsWeb content almost by definition has to stay free, >because the users can always take it elsewhere. And it's hard to >imagine Ancestry not supporting RootsWeb's functionality, because >RootsWeb is relatively inexpensive to operate and serves to grow the >customer base for Ancestry's commercial products. > > >From my perspective, there's nothing particularly good or bad about >moving RootsWeb's content inside the Ancestry domain. It clears up >some statistical difficulties associated with tracking traffic at the >two sites, at the cost of vaguely blurring the line between the free >community site and the the commercial data provider. > >On the balance, that's a yawn. > >Again from my perspective, the thing that has surprized me is how >little effort Ancestry has put into improving RootsWeb over the last >seven years. Technology has changed a lot, these days there's a whole >variety of powerful new social networking tools and such, but most of >RootsWeb has been stagnant or (arguably) has deteriorated. > >Karen and I have been kinda sitting on the sidelines for some years >now, just operating Linkpendium to stay involved. We have lately >started gathering the resources to build a next-generation site for >genealogists that fully exploits current technology. > >Stay tuned. ;) > >Cheers, B. > > >-- >Dr. Brian Leverich <leverich@linkpendium.com> >Moderator, soc.genealogy.methods/GENMTD-L >Founder, RootsWeb.com and Linkpendium.com