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Matt Dralle
Site Admin
Joined: 08 Nov 2005
Posts: 25935
Location: Livermore CA USA
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 Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2012 10:03 am Post subject: Contributions Down By 23%... |
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Dear Listers,
As of today, Contributions to the Matronics List Fund Raiser are lagging behind last year at this time by roughly 23%. I have a Fund Raiser each year simply to cover my operating
costs for the Lists. I *do not* accept any advertising income to support the Lists and rely solely on the Contributions of members to keep the expenses paid.
I run all of my own servers and they are housed here locally, and the Internet connection is a commercial-grade, dual T1 connection with public address space. I also maintain a full
backup system that does nightly backups of all List-related data so that in the event of a server crash, all of the Lists and the many years of List archive data could be restored
onto a new server in a matter of hours.
All of this costs a fair amount of money, not to mention a significant amount of my personal time. I have a Fund Raiser each year to cover these costs and I ask that members that
feel they receive a benefit from my investments make a modest Contribution each year to support the continued operation and upgrade of these services.
If you enjoy the Lists, please make a Contribution today. I also offer some incentive gifts for larger Contribution levels. At the Contribution Web Site, you can use a credit card,
Paypal, or personal check to show your support for the continuation of these services:
http://www.matronics.com/contribution
Or, drop a personal check in the mail to:
Matt Dralle / Matronics
581 Jeannie Way
Livermore CA 94550
Thank you for your support!
Matt Dralle
Matronics Email List Administrator
| | - The Matronics TeamGrumman-List Email Forum - | | | Use the List Feature Navigator to browse the many List utilities available such as the Email Subscriptions page, Archive Search & Download, 7-Day Browse, Chat, FAQ, Photoshare, and much more:
http://www.matronics.com/Navigator?TeamGrumman-List |
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_________________
Matt Dralle
Matronics Email List Administrator |
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mel(at)becknet.com
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2012 10:21 pm Post subject: Contributions Down By 23%... |
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I'm an ISP infrastructure engineer, so I understand your desire to maintain your own servers and commercial Internet connection. However, for a mailing list such as TeamGrumman, I think it's simply not cost effective to do this. There are so many excellent free mailing list services, much more functional than the software you use for TeamGrumman. You mention the significant amount of personal time you have to spend maintaining your infrastructure. Pushing the list to a service would cut that time requirement way down.
For example, GMane.org's free mail archiving service is an email-to-archive gateway similar to what you have now, but with infinite Web archive browsing and searching (instead of just 7 days), RSS feeds, realtime indexing and extensive spam filtering. You can have a moderated list, with closed or moderated posting, and it even supports Usenet news readers.
There are many other similar free services.
I totally get your desire to run your own boxes and control everything yourself. But that's a separate hobby from TeamGrumman. Since it is possible for you to run a higher quality list for free on one of these other services, it doesn't seem practical for you to expect donations for the cost of your own mini datacenter. By going to a high volume service, you'd gain valuable personal time and subscribers would gain some useful features, such as RSS feeds and complex searches.
-mel
On Nov 26, 2012, at 9:57 AM, Matt Dralle wrote:
[quote]--> TeamGrumman-List message posted by: Matt Dralle <dralle(at)matronics.com (dralle(at)matronics.com)>
Dear Listers,
As of today, Contributions to the Matronics List Fund Raiser are lagging behind last year at this time by roughly 23%. I have a Fund Raiser each year simply to cover my operating
costs for the Lists. I *do not* accept any advertising income to support the Lists and rely solely on the Contributions of members to keep the expenses paid.
I run all of my own servers and they are housed here locally, and the Internet connection is a commercial-grade, dual T1 connection with public address space. I also maintain a full
backup system that does nightly backups of all List-related data so that in the event of a server crash, all of the Lists and the many years of List archive data could be restored
onto a new server in a matter of hours.
All of this costs a fair amount of money, not to mention a significant amount of my personal time. I have a Fund Raiser each year to cover these costs and I ask that members that
feel they receive a benefit from my investments make a modest Contribution each year to support the continued operation and upgrade of these services.
If you enjoy the Lists, please make a Contribution today. I also offer some incentive gifts for larger Contribution levels. At the Contribution Web Site, you can use a credit card,
Paypal, or personal check to show your support for the continuation of these services:
http://www.matronics.com/contribution
Or, drop a personal check in the mail to:
Matt Dralle / Matronics
581 Jeannie Way
Livermore CA 94550
Thank you for your support!
Matt Dralle
Matronics Email List -= -- Please Support Your Lists (And Get AeroElectric http://www.matronics.com/co -Matt Dralle, List - The --> http://www.ma &n=============
[b]
| | - The Matronics TeamGrumman-List Email Forum - | | | Use the List Feature Navigator to browse the many List utilities available such as the Email Subscriptions page, Archive Search & Download, 7-Day Browse, Chat, FAQ, Photoshare, and much more:
http://www.matronics.com/Navigator?TeamGrumman-List |
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teamgrumman(at)yahoo.com
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2012 10:57 pm Post subject: Contributions Down By 23%... |
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This is not my service. Matte Dralle runs a lot of lists. This is just one of them.
Thanks for your concern, but, really it isn't an issue.
Gary
Sent from my iPad
On Nov 26, 2012, at 10:20 PM, Mel Beckman <mel(at)becknet.com> wrote:
[quote] I'm an ISP infrastructure engineer, so I understand your desire to maintain your own servers and commercial Internet connection. However, for a mailing list such as TeamGrumman, I think it's simply not cost effective to do this. There are so many excellent free mailing list services, much more functional than the software you use for TeamGrumman. You mention the significant amount of personal time you have to spend maintaining your infrastructure. Pushing the list to a service would cut that time requirement way down.
For example, GMane.org's free mail archiving service is an email-to-archive gateway similar to what you have now, but with infinite Web archive browsing and searching (instead of just 7 days), RSS feeds, realtime indexing and extensive spam filtering. You can have a moderated list, with closed or moderated posting, and it even supports Usenet news readers.
There are many other similar free services.
I totally get your desire to run your own boxes and control everything yourself. But that's a separate hobby from TeamGrumman. Since it is possible for you to run a higher quality list for free on one of these other services, it doesn't seem practical for you to expect donations for the cost of your own mini datacenter. By going to a high volume service, you'd gain valuable personal time and subscribers would gain some useful features, such as RSS feeds and complex searches.
-mel
On Nov 26, 2012, at 9:57 AM, Matt Dralle wrote:
>
>
> Dear Listers,
>
> As of today, Contributions to the Matronics List Fund Raiser are lagging behind last year at this time by roughly 23%. I have a Fund Raiser each year simply to cover my operating
> costs for the Lists. I *do not* accept any advertising income to support the Lists and rely solely on the Contributions of members to keep the expenses paid.
>
> I run all of my own servers and they are housed here locally, and the Internet connection is a commercial-grade, dual T1 connection with public address space. I also maintain a full
> backup system that does nightly backups of all List-related data so that in the event of a server crash, all of the Lists and the many years of List archive data could be restored
> onto a new server in a matter of hours.
>
> All of this costs a fair amount of money, not to mention a significant amount of my personal time. I have a Fund Raiser each year to cover these costs and I ask that members that
> feel they receive a benefit from my investments make a modest Contribution each year to support the continued operation and upgrade of these services
| | - The Matronics TeamGrumman-List Email Forum - | | | Use the List Feature Navigator to browse the many List utilities available such as the Email Subscriptions page, Archive Search & Download, 7-Day Browse, Chat, FAQ, Photoshare, and much more:
http://www.matronics.com/Navigator?TeamGrumman-List |
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mel(at)becknet.com
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2012 11:25 pm Post subject: Contributions Down By 23%... |
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Gary,
I realize this isn't your service. But I wasn't addressing you. I was replying to Matt's email requesting donations for maintaining TeamGrumman and his other many lists. Donations are an issue today since they're declining, as Matt points out. I don't want to see TeamGrumman or any of the other lists go away due to unmet operational costs. Donations won't be as much of an issue if Matt hosts his lists for free, with higher quality and reliability, using one of the services I describe.
Two Internet T1s cost at least several hundred dollars per month, because unlike asymmetrical DSL or cable Internet (which has faster download than upload), T1's have the same 1.5 Mbps each up and down. That upload bandwidth is necessary to delivery continuous streams of mailing list messages to subscribers. It's an expense that goes away with a free list service.
Matt's T1s, while expensive, are not as reliable as the free bandwidth available to free list sites, which typically are located at backbone data centers with gigabits of upstream connectivity. So while lowering costs, Matt also gains resilience.
You need at least two server-class computers for reliable on-site application hosting, and I suspect Matt has many more than two. Each costs thousands of dollars to purchase and maintain. Those costs also drop dramatically with outside list hosting, since lists can be maintained from an ordinary desktop computer.
With offsite list hosting, the only cost to Matt is his time. I dearly appreciate his generous contribution of labor to the current infrastructure. With offsite hosting, Matt gets a huge amount of that time back.
it's certainly fair for Matt to request donations for his labor. Offsite hosting seems to me an attractive solution to the declining donations. I've seen offsite hosting of all kinds of applications work for many of my clients too. It's a time-tested option.
-mel
On Nov 26, 2012, at 10:58 PM, Gary L Vogt wrote:
[quote]This is not my service. Matte Dralle runs a lot of lists. This is just one of them.
Thanks for your concern, but, really it isn't an issue.
Gary
Sent from my iPad
On Nov 26, 2012, at 10:20 PM, Mel Beckman <mel(at)becknet.com (mel(at)becknet.com)> wrote:
| Quote: | I'm an ISP infrastructure engineer, so I understand your desire to maintain your own servers and commercial Internet connection. However, for a mailing list such as TeamGrumman, I think it's simply not cost effective to do this. There are so many excellent free mailing list services, much more functional than the software you use for TeamGrumman. You mention the significant amount of personal time you have to spend maintaining your infrastructure. Pushing the list to a service would cut that time requirement way down.
For example, GMane.org's free mail archiving service is an email-to-archive gateway similar to what you have now, but with infinite Web archive browsing and searching (instead of just 7 days), RSS feeds, realtime indexing and extensive spam filtering. You can have a moderated list, with closed or moderated posting, and it even supports Usenet news readers.
There are many other similar free services.
I totally get your desire to run your own boxes and control everything yourself. But that's a separate hobby from TeamGrumman. Since it is possible for you to run a higher quality list for free on one of these other services, it doesn't seem practical for you to expect donations for the cost of your own mini datacenter. By going to a high volume service, you'd gain valuable personal time and subscribers would gain some useful features, such as RSS feeds and complex searches.
-mel
On Nov 26, 2012, at 9:57 AM, Matt Dralle wrote:
| Quote: | --> TeamGrumman-List message posted by: Matt Dralle <dralle(at)matronics.com (dralle(at)matronics.com)>
Dear Listers,
As of today, Contributions to the Matronics List Fund Raiser are lagging behind last year at this time by roughly 23%. I have a Fund Raiser each year simply to cover my operating
costs for the Lists. I *do not* accept any advertising income to support the Lists and rely solely on the Contributions of members to keep the expenses paid.
I run all of my own servers and they are housed here locally, and the Internet connection is a commercial-grade, dual T1 connection with public address space. I also maintain a full
backup system that does nightly backups of all List-related data so that in the event of a server crash, all of the Lists and the many years of List archive data could be restored
onto a new server in a matter of hours.
All of this costs a fair amount of money, not to mention a significant amount of my personal time. I have a Fund Raiser each year to cover these costs and I ask that members that
feel they receive a benefit from my investments make a modest Contribution each year to support the continued operation and upgrade of these services.
If you enjoy the Lists, please make a Contribution today. I also offer some incentive gifts for larger Contribution levels. At the Contribution Web Site, you can use a credit card,
Paypal, or personal check to show your support for the continuation of these services:
http://www.matronics.com/contribution
Or, drop a personal check in the mail to:
Matt Dralle / Matronics
581 Jeannie Way
Livermore CA 94550
Thank you for your support!
Matt Dralle
Matronics Email List -= -- Please Support Your Lists (And Get AeroElectric http://www.matronics.com/co -Matt Dralle, List - The --> http://www.ma &n=============
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| Quote: |
href="http://www.aeroelectric.com/">www.aeroelectric.com
href="http://www.buildersbooks.com/">www.buildersbooks.com
href="http://www.homebuilthelp.com/">www.homebuilthelp.com
href="http://www.matronics.com/contribution">http://www.matronics.com/contribution
href="http://www.matronics.com/Navigator?TeamGrumman-List">http://www.matronics.com/Navigator?TeamGrumman-List
href="http://forums.matronics.com/">http://forums.matronics.com
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[b]
| | - The Matronics TeamGrumman-List Email Forum - | | | Use the List Feature Navigator to browse the many List utilities available such as the Email Subscriptions page, Archive Search & Download, 7-Day Browse, Chat, FAQ, Photoshare, and much more:
http://www.matronics.com/Navigator?TeamGrumman-List |
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deej(at)deej.net
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Nov 27, 2012 8:58 am Post subject: Contributions Down By 23%... |
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Hi Mel,
Just an fyi, but Matt isn't likely to read your message. Although he
maintains the lists, he does not read all of them. If you want to get
in touch with him, I recommend sending directly to his email address
rather than to the list, which is dralle(at)matronics.com.
For what it is worth, I also maintain a set of aviation forums (email
and web interfaces) using my own equipment and paying for it completely
out of my own pocket. I don't ask for donations, and I do not have any
advertising. Computer equipment costs are quite cheap as long as you
aren't buying the latest and greatest.
Although the "free" mailing lists do provide a nice service, I disagree
that they are a replacement for being able to implement and support them
myself.
I suspect if Matt changed from T1 connections to something less
expansive, the cost for providing the service would drop considerably.
My half cents, fwiw.
-Dj
--
Dj Merrill - N1JOV
Sportsman 2+2 Builder #7118 N421DJ - http://deej.net/sportsman/
Glastar Flyer N866RH - http://deej.net/glastar/
| | - The Matronics TeamGrumman-List Email Forum - | | | Use the List Feature Navigator to browse the many List utilities available such as the Email Subscriptions page, Archive Search & Download, 7-Day Browse, Chat, FAQ, Photoshare, and much more:
http://www.matronics.com/Navigator?TeamGrumman-List |
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jim(at)jimstarkey.net
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Nov 27, 2012 11:29 am Post subject: Contributions Down By 23%... |
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I've written a list server and managed lists on my own hardware. It
made sense, once. It doesn't, now. I host a list on Google Groups and
participate in another on Yahoo. Each is better than a homebrew -- and
a hell of lot less work. And it isn't necessary to troll for contributions.
T1s are nuts. They're expensive, unreliable, and have pathetic
bandwidth compared to a cable modem. The cheapest Comcast commercial
service is 12 times faster more a great deal more reliable than a
Verizon T1.
But the ISP is moot. Google and Yahoo have infinite bandwidth and are
willing to share it for free and do the heavy lifting gratis. What's
wrong with this picture.
It's not my list, but a venue with infinite bandwidth, a more robust and
capable platform, and doesn't troll for contributions sounds to me like
a no-brainer.
On 11/27/2012 11:58 AM, Dj Merrill wrote:
| Quote: |
Hi Mel,
Just an fyi, but Matt isn't likely to read your message. Although he
maintains the lists, he does not read all of them. If you want to get
in touch with him, I recommend sending directly to his email address
rather than to the list, which is dralle(at)matronics.com.
For what it is worth, I also maintain a set of aviation forums (email
and web interfaces) using my own equipment and paying for it completely
out of my own pocket. I don't ask for donations, and I do not have any
advertising. Computer equipment costs are quite cheap as long as you
aren't buying the latest and greatest.
Although the "free" mailing lists do provide a nice service, I disagree
that they are a replacement for being able to implement and support them
myself.
I suspect if Matt changed from T1 connections to something less
expansive, the cost for providing the service would drop considerably.
My half cents, fwiw.
-Dj
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| | - The Matronics TeamGrumman-List Email Forum - | | | Use the List Feature Navigator to browse the many List utilities available such as the Email Subscriptions page, Archive Search & Download, 7-Day Browse, Chat, FAQ, Photoshare, and much more:
http://www.matronics.com/Navigator?TeamGrumman-List |
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mel(at)becknet.com
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Nov 27, 2012 11:47 am Post subject: Contributions Down By 23%... |
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DJ,
I did email Matt directly as well. Most commercial email list managers will notify the list owner of replies to a message sent by the list owner. Perhaps' Matt's software does not have this option. In any event, it's worth discussing both privately and publicly, in light of the list features we could gain from a commercial list archive service.
Jim,
We obviously agree  And you're right, T1s have gotten steadily less viable as an edge connection, although it's often the only option in remote locations. A T1 can go virtually any distance, including across the country. DSL and Cable can go at most five miles from the head end, and at that distance speed is well under a megabit per second.
One issue I have with Google and Yahoo is they give you no way (AFAIK) to perform your own bulk backups. And they have lost content. GMANE and other mid-tier operators do offer that option, for as little as ten cents per gigabyte to download. Matt could probably back up all his highly-compressible text list content for a few bucks a month.
-mel
On Nov 27, 2012, at 11:29 AM, Jim Starkey wrote:
| Quote: |
I've written a list server and managed lists on my own hardware. It
made sense, once. It doesn't, now. I host a list on Google Groups and
participate in another on Yahoo. Each is better than a homebrew -- and
a hell of lot less work. And it isn't necessary to troll for contributions.
T1s are nuts. They're expensive, unreliable, and have pathetic
bandwidth compared to a cable modem. The cheapest Comcast commercial
service is 12 times faster more a great deal more reliable than a
Verizon T1.
But the ISP is moot. Google and Yahoo have infinite bandwidth and are
willing to share it for free and do the heavy lifting gratis. What's
wrong with this picture.
It's not my list, but a venue with infinite bandwidth, a more robust and
capable platform, and doesn't troll for contributions sounds to me like
a no-brainer.
On 11/27/2012 11:58 AM, Dj Merrill wrote:
>
>
> Hi Mel,
> Just an fyi, but Matt isn't likely to read your message. Although he
> maintains the lists, he does not read all of them. If you want to get
> in touch with him, I recommend sending directly to his email address
> rather than to the list, which is dralle(at)matronics.com.
>
> For what it is worth, I also maintain a set of aviation forums (email
> and web interfaces) using my own equipment and paying for it completely
> out of my own pocket. I don't ask for donations, and I do not have any
> advertising. Computer equipment costs are quite cheap as long as you
> aren't buying the latest and greatest.
>
> Although the "free" mailing lists do provide a nice service, I disagree
> that they are a replacement for being able to implement and support them
> myself.
>
> I suspect if Matt changed from T1 connections to something less
> expansive, the cost for providing the service would drop considerably.
>
> My half cents, fwiw.
>
> -Dj
>
>
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| | - The Matronics TeamGrumman-List Email Forum - | | | Use the List Feature Navigator to browse the many List utilities available such as the Email Subscriptions page, Archive Search & Download, 7-Day Browse, Chat, FAQ, Photoshare, and much more:
http://www.matronics.com/Navigator?TeamGrumman-List |
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deej(at)deej.net
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Nov 27, 2012 1:45 pm Post subject: Contributions Down By 23%... |
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On 11/27/2012 02:29 PM, Jim Starkey wrote:
| Quote: |
I've written a list server and managed lists on my own hardware. It
made sense, once. It doesn't, now. I host a list on Google Groups and
participate in another on Yahoo. Each is better than a homebrew -- and
a hell of lot less work.
|
If we were talking about a truly homebrew system, I might agree.
However, we are talking about professional forum and mailing list
software running on servers that are maintained by individuals, not a
homebrew setup. It is the same software used by many institutions
around the world (at least what I'm running, I'm not sure exactly what
Matt has implemented).
I maintain lists on both Yahoo and on my own servers, and they are
about equal in terms of work involved. There is more work to do the
initial setup using your own server, but once up and running there is
not a huge difference. There are advantages to running on your own
servers, which IMHO outweigh the commercial services. such as the bulk
backups that Mel mentions.
I guess I'm saying that my experience does not match yours in terms of
the amount of effort needed to maintain the lists.
-Dj
--
Dj Merrill - N1JOV
Sportsman 2+2 Builder #7118 N421DJ - http://deej.net/sportsman/
Glastar Flyer N866RH - http://deej.net/glastar/
| | - The Matronics TeamGrumman-List Email Forum - | | | Use the List Feature Navigator to browse the many List utilities available such as the Email Subscriptions page, Archive Search & Download, 7-Day Browse, Chat, FAQ, Photoshare, and much more:
http://www.matronics.com/Navigator?TeamGrumman-List |
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