Re: to the rescue of CSF

Several people commented on this topic. Here is a preliminary summary:

A. TIMELINE:
We do not know for sure when CSF will close down

B. SCOPE of rescue operation:
CSF is the home of 28 discussion forums. It makes a big difference whether
we  are talking about rescuing CSF or rescuing WSN, which is only one of the
28.

C. FEASIBILITY:
rescuing WSN seems feasible to me without big finance,
rescuing CSF seems to require major financing (Soros or some big-money
members of CSF could help)

In the following I focus on WSN:

D. ALTERNATIVE HOME and Administrator for WSN:
One proposal was to move WSN to Professor Chase-Dunn's center in California.
(To be explored)

E. ALTERNATIVE WEB BASE and Software for WSN:
Several possibilities were mentioned, namely:

(1) Online Policy Group (mentioned by 2 contributors):
"A possible alternative host for lists such as this one is Online Policy
Group, which runs a number of progressive lists. See
http://www.onlinepolicy.org/ for details."

Cost = to be inquired

(2) Mailman ("also used by lbo-talk"):
http://www.list.org/
"Mailman, the GNU Mailing List Manager
Mailman is free software for managing electronic mail
discussion and e-newsletter lists. Mailman is
integrated with the web, making it easy for users to
manage their accounts and for list owners to
administer their lists. Mailman supports built-in
archiving, automatic bounce processing, content
filtering, digest delivery, spam filters, and more.
See the features page for details.

Mailman is free software, distributed under the GNU
General Public License. Mailman is written in the
Python programming language, with a little bit of C
code for security..._"

Cost = free

(3) Yahoo Groups:
check:
Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

Cost = ??

F. FINANCING of an alternative WSN:
A subscriber fee was mentioned. One subscriber mentioned:
"I don't know how many follow, but it might be interesting to see how many
individuals would contribute to keep this going.  I for one, would be
willing to do so."

G. OTHER things to think of for an alternative WSN:

(1) the WSN archive, now under CSF, should be preserved and accessible
(2) special homes - e.g., for AGF writings - should be maintained
(3) other

D. I like to stay connected with this debate, but as I will be back in
Canada in September, please keep me connected under my portable email
addres, which
is:
    gko15@hotmail.com

Thanks.
Gert