Many of you have wondered I'm sure about the Hosting Agreement. Many of you have wondered about Motion 03-11 as well. Since the National Coordinator has said that the AB members are free to offer their opinions about such: The fact of the matter is that Motion 03-11 is tied to the Hosting Agreement. I would be remiss if I did not state here a public apology to Bill Oliver in that I did not previously come to his defense in the time period after the Motion now known as 03-11 first came to Board-L. Prior to his posting it there, he sent me a copy and requested that I take a look/see as to wording. I made a few suggestions which he incorporated into the Motion he presented shortly thereafter. With regard to why even present 03-11: When the NC first presented the Hosting Agreement to the AB - after reading the document - I asked if we could get someone to interpret the legalese into ordinary English so that we could understand and know the ramifications of such agreement. Subsequently this was done and there were only one or two points that came up from that review, as I recall, that were matters of concern. As time went along, several members told the other members and the NC that this agreement while parts might be confidential in nature - the agreement as such needed to be disseminated to the members at large. The reasoning behind 03-11 was two-fold: 1 - to inform the membership that such an agreement was in the offing 2 - to assist the SCs/ASCs with information regarding the agreement so that they would have some answers when the inevitable questions would come from their CCs. One only has to think back to the GenConnect issue - when SCs and CCs found out at the same time to understand the reasoning behind this. Then the SCs had no more clue of what was going on than the CCs did and in some instances knew less than the CCs did. On 4/24 I sent the following, in part, to the AB: If this is broadcast to only the SCs first - Advantages: - Gives them time to have some answers for their CCs who will likely ask them questions? - Gives them time to have a unified answer instead of guesswork - which I think we might have some answer for? <snip> - Approximately 85 more folks versus 1200 folks thinking about / discussing this / for when the room becomes full of talking - would anything other than talking, shouting and put downs be that far behind and would anything of substance come of it? Disadvantages: - What are the ramifications from RW if we speak this out of this room? - Will they pull the rug out from under us at once? - If they do - no plan to deal with such. ============================================= If however, you decide to go forth to the whole Project at once - be prepared for: - a firestorm - lots of misinformation - lots of arm chair lawyers - lots of fear - lots of anger - lots of any other emotion you can think of directed not only at Rootsweb/Ancestry but us as well. ----------------------- There are certain ramifications in the Hosting Agreement that the membership needs to address - which in doing so, may cause the Project to 'look' and/or be administered differently depending on the solution that the membership deigns to be the most acceptable. How those can be addressed while maintaining the confidentially of the agreement, I'm not sure. Perhaps the NC can address that? Tim