[1075] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
New Issues (was: Flaming at Abernathy)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Barry Shein)
Wed Jul 24 14:41:38 1991
Date: Wed, 24 Jul 91 14:39:50 -0400
From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
To: sac@apple.com
Cc: HABEGGER_J@bronze.colorado.edu, com-priv@psi.com, willis@cs.tamu.edu
In-Reply-To: Steve Cisler's message of Wed, 24 Jul 91 10:25:41 -0700 <9107241725.AA18092@apple.com>
>From: Steve Cisler <sac@apple.com>
>This brings me back to Rick Adams hope that users will receive
>support to make their own decisions about how they hook up.
>Judging from the interest by a very disparate bunch of people, how
>would you screen users if you were the funding agency? I think the
>definition of 'user' or even 'researcher' should be very broad, but that
>could cause problems to a state or federal funding agency whose focus
>might be somewhat more narrow.
Well, my gut reaction is "let's not make the best the enemy of the
good", I think we can easily define a lot of organizations which
funding agencies would have no problem with, such as K12 systems and
public libraries. As we start working through that list we can begin
discussing the harder cases.
Commercial and other experienced services can also provide an
administrative role in acting as a point of contact for entities too
small or unfocused to easily access direct funding. As a model,
consider hospitals who manage significant govt funding soas to provide
community services etc. which would be nearly impossible to provide
otherwise.
The point being, there is more than one model available and there's
no particular reason to look for just one, backbones have different
needs to accomplish their tasks than end-users, eg.
-Barry Shein
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