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Path: utzoo!utgpu!utcsri!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!ai.toronto.edu!rayan
From: rayan@ai.toronto.edu.UUCP
Newsgroups: can.general
Subject: Re: How to run the UUCP interface to the CA domain authority?
Message-ID: <1987Nov22.145125.10426@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>
Date: Sun, 22-Nov-87 14:51:23 EST
Article-I.D.: jarvis.1987Nov22.145125.10426
Posted: Sun Nov 22 14:51:23 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 24-Nov-87 03:50:52 EST
Distribution: can
Organization: University of Toronto, AI group
Lines: 71

This is basically to summarize the comments I got... The bottom line is that
the operation will be run as proposed, and fees will start out at 50$/annum.

Before the summary of comments, I should just mention that indeed the
charging factor applied to the account will be as I assumed, so no numbers
will change (good thing too, because the next higher charging factor would
have more than doubled the numbers -- thanks go to CSRI for their cooperation).

Anyway, apart from Dave Martindale's philosophical gripe posted here, there
were no other negative comments, and half a dozen or so positive ones. Thanks
to Henry Spencer, David Trueman, Ian Darwin, Dave Sherman, Eric Carroll,
and Michael Herman, for their responses.

A couple of the comments are worth broadcasting here:

	I think it's a good proposal. $50 sounds like a reasonable
	fee. It wasn't clear to me to what extent the "expenses" include
	paying you at $25/hour -- was that the intention? I have no problem
	with that either. Provided the service works and you report on
	the finances to the net once every 6 months or whatever, that
	should be fine. In particular, you will be taking the risk of
	making less if the work proves to require more than you estimated.
	But do make it clear, in public, that the net would be hiring
	you for this job.  If we hear screams, complaints, or offers
	from others to do it for less, let's have that out in the open
	too. For the record, I support your proposal.

Yes, that was the intention. staff rates are a bit over 20$/hour, and
my opportunity cost for work inside UofT corresponds to the rate I assumed
(and I can only work a small N hours per year). This isn't exactly a money-
making opportunity. The report on finances suggestion is fine with me; I
was thinking about something similar already.

	I would suggest that you push for a formal organization to be created to
	insulate uoft and csri, as I suspect that the work load and cost will
	quickly become unmanagable.

UofT and CSRI are insulated in a sense. What exists is a sort of gentlemans
agreement for CSRI to provide some support. It is understood that if the load
becomes too high, they will receive appropriate reimbursement. I thought about
a separate entity to run this thing, but I don't think it is justifiable yet,
from the point of view of workload at least. I have been slightly concerned
about the legal problems that might crop up, but as long as I'm not the CA
authority, and behave responsibly, one would hope the world won't place silly
obstacles in the way.

	And I would approve of a connection cost
	(zone fee) of ~$100 cdn a year. After all, I happily pay $150 US for my
	.COM registration, and would likely pay more if I had to. A higher price
	will make the pc users think twice.

and

	One comment, however.  Although it is probably impossible to administer,
	it would be nice if larger companies/sites paid a larger fee.  I think
	the US project has some sort of hierarchy to address this.

Yes, it would be nice. I'm not sure if it is worthwhile though. The real costs
are not really related to the size of the organization, but rather to the
complexity of its interface to the world. Certainly there is a correlation.
One could of course make a higher fee voluntary (...) but the accounting people
want to see something in writing that says how much must be paid. Are there
any other thoughts on this matter? Maybe we could have two versions of the
instructions, and send the one with the higher price on request ;-)
In the absence of a workable and fair scheme, I think $50 across-the-board
will do for now, and we can think up something new for next year, if needed.

The documents will be distributed widely tomorrow (Monday 23rd Nov).
This is almost exactly a year since the discussion started in earnest.

rayan