[ih] META-topic: Archives, list support, Internet Society (was Re: ruggedized Honeywell 516 ARPANET IMP cabinet ...)

[Andrew Sullivan]

This is a sort of meta-comment and not exactly about the list topic, so I've so marked it in the header.

On Wed, Aug 27, 2025 at 07:59:45PM -0500, Joe Touch via Internet-history wrote:
>
>The resolution is that the list is the list. It is not a permanent archive.
>
>Very little is actually free. The best we could do is get ISOC to donate operation of this service.

To be fair, at least when I worked there lists all had good backups of the archives and so on, and it was generally understood that, though some communities would likely move away from mailman for communication needs, some list functionality was going to be a long-term requirement no matter what.  Of course, I don't work there any more and most of the IT staff seems to have turned over, but I think it's pretty unlikely the Internet Society would turn on this important resource any time soon.  (OTOH, I've been surprised before.)

I will note that the Internet Society is a 501(c)(3), so in the US and many countries with a tax treaty with the US contributions to the Internet Society are tax-deductible.  It is possible that, if the fundraising staff knew of a small but dedicated group of people who wanted to arrange donations to the Internet Society in the interes of the operation of certain bits of infrastructure, they would want to talk to those people.  To set expectations, it is unlikely to be the case that there would be an "Internet History List fund" or anything of that narrow description.  In general, charities hate restricted funds (which is what funds that are donated with an earmark for a particular purpose—even a broad category of purposes—are called).  This is because they are _very expensive_ to accept (the IRS requires that they be carefully tracked, that you prove that you spent for the required purposes, and so on), they can get "trapped" or be used inefficiently (I'm aware of a university that has a huge floral fund and that rips out perfectly good plants every couple of weeks during flower season just to be able to keep the floral fund from running away out of control—you need to spend the money down or you get into a situation where you can _never_ effectively spend it), and also they don't count as public support until certain conditions are met (so they're not like unrestricted donations in the way they count for public support).  That said, creating a program for (say) five years with an included plan for the support of (or even maybe features for) the list assuming certain donation levels get met by the organization might be something they'd be willing to take on (I have no idea, as I have no ongoing relationship with the staff or any special information about what's going on).

And now back to your regular programming.

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at crankycanuck.ca