Photo.net is an advertiser supported site.
Photo.net is an advertiser supported site.
And it is owned by Philip Greenspun. What? You think the p[eople who advertise there own it? Hardly.
Never said that the advertisers owned it, they just support it. If these forums are moved to Photo.net, then more people will be exposed to the advertising, which should justify an increase in the advertising rates, which should cover any additional costs associated with the new forums on Photo.net. Even if the advertising rates are not raised immediately, this forum (and the others being moved to Photo.net) is currently on its own server, which costs more money to maintain than if it was on the Photo.net server(s).
As to who actually owns Photo.net or Greenspun.com, I don't know for sure after the recent events at Greenspun's company (in which he gave up control in exchange for infusion of venture capital). Phil apparently owns some of the company, but it seems to be less than 50% of the voting shares.
Michael , you are talking about Ars Digita, Philip's former company. Photo.net has always been seperate from Ars Digita. My source for this is Philip Greenspun, who stayed at my house over this past Thanksgiving.
Ellis, do you mean that 1.) the ?ownership? of Greenspunc.com and Photo.net is separate from Ars Digita, or 2.) that absolutely no Ars Digita resources (hardware, software, facilities, or personnel) are or ever have been used to support Greenspun.com or Photo.net? If the second is true, then apparently Philip Greenspun has decided that he does not want to personally subsidize this forum anymore.
In any event, it appears that the need to move this forum to Photo.net is somehow related to the either the financial problems at Ars Digita or with Philip Greenspun?s leaving the company (even though he may still own some shares).
To clarify a few points: The greenspun.com server is owned by Philip Greenspun (no surprise). The greenspun.com server was maintained by ArsDigita, a company founded by Philip Greenspun. This spring, Philip was forced out of ArsDigita, and as a consequence, the server is no longer maintained by ArsDigita. As an individual, Philip has better things to do than maintaining his server and providing free services, especially now that alternatives become more available.
My only problem with moving this forum to a non greenspun related site, is that I REALLY like the layout and design of the LUSENET/Photo.net forums. Very easy to read. One click gets you to the question and all of the answers. Not like so many others where you have to click-click-click-click to see all of the different replies.
Just my 2 cents from a mostly quiet long time reader.
"Ellis, do you mean that 1.) the ?ownership? of Greenspun.com and Photo.net is separate from Ars Digita"
Yes, that is my my understanding. I think Tuan has answered your second question.
Sorry about that legalistic thing. Rajeev and Lisa went and hired a lawyer when they started managing photo.net. This obviously wrong piece of verbiage was the result. I'm going to be editing it out myself this weekend. The users own the copyright to what they contribute but photo.net needs to have a license to publish it in perpetuity.
As far as photo.net and ArsDigita are concerned (above), the companies are separate and always have been. ArsDigita sold a minority share of its stock to some venture capitalists in April 2000. This set off a tedious and uninteresting chain of events, among which the highlights were my withdrawal from involvement with day-to-day affairs of the company (summer 2000) and my retirement from the world of business in June 2001. A few months ago ArsDigita decided that it was no longer interested in maintaining the free collaboration services at greenspun.com. So all of the burden falls now onto my shoulders. And frankly I'm not really interested in fielding daily cell phone calls from confused or upset users of greenspun.com, esp. given that I spend most of my time these days without Internet access, either in a Winnebago or a Diamond Katana (single-engine trainer airplane), and therefore couldn't deal with their problem even if I wanted to. (A typical phone call is from someone who is upset with a posting somewhere in LUSENET. I ask the person if he or she has contacted the owner/moderator of the forum to request removal of the offending item. The answer is sometimes "no", sometimes "what?", and oftentimes "it's your site, that's your job".)
So the bottom line is that I'm trying to move the photo stuff onto the photo.net server where it can be maintained, backed up, and customer serviced by the existing photo.net staff (3 full time people). And I'm trying to arrange an orderly shutdown/transition of the rest of the greenspun.com services into a financially self- sustaining cooperative where the users and publishers pay the cost of hosting, sysadmin, dbadmin, programming enhancements, and customer service.
Philip, thanks very much for all you've done for us and for taking the time to explain. Here's some input for your editing this weekend:
I would be happy with the language you intend as long as it includes a photo.net commitment that, when using its publishing license, it will always give attribution to the author of a post.
I would be *very* happy if, in addition to attribution, photo.net agrees that any posts it publishes will be reproduced in their entirety, thereby precluding out of context quotations.
Thanks for listening.
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