🚀 go-pugleaf

In <37d2b505.1993608@news.newforce.ca> darrell@newforce.ca (Darrell) writes:
>What it boils down to is most of the NCF costs seem to be way out
>of line. They amount to an small ISP with 10,000-11,000 (smaller than
>Magma,Cyberus, IGS etc) users that requires a huge volunteer base to
>run... WHY? The overhead of NCF is lower than the real ISP's as NCF
>doesn't have to pay market prices for local loops, T-3 and other
>connections through the good graces of Carleton University, they have
>Mitel providing almost a complete PRI phonebank.

It requires more effort to operate the NCF because 
   1) It provides a text based interface
   2) It provides content in the form of menus and newsgroups.
   3) Commercial providers are not providing a full year of service for
      anything approaching $24.  The reality is that the NCF is seriously
      underfunded for what it is trying to do and for the most part is 
      trying to make do with dated hardware.

BTW, the NCF has to pay Carleton for Internet connectivity.

> But the simple fact
>of the matter is Other ISP's can and do other better services for more
>users with less man-power (person-power?) than NCF, why is that. IMHO
>NCF seems to be modelled after a federal government agency, top-heavy
>with management.

   The NCF has a grand total of one management person.  

>NCF as a business is a failure, they have succeeded in reducing (based
>on their own figures) their user base from 65,000 down to about 11,000

A lot of the original freenets are either gone or planning to shutdown
so the NCF has been relatively successful in comparison to similar
organizations.  Given that Internet connectivity has become a relatively
cheap commodity I would have to say that the current model of the NCF 
may not be sustainable.

>There is some secret backroom dealings where board members are getting
>paid as consultants (on contract I heard of was $80,000) but there was
>no word whether this money went back into NCF. I have a real hard time
>with a "community based, non-profit" group bidding on commercial
>contracts,  while holding their hands out to local businesses for
>support. Give us money so we can compete against you!

I would have thought that you'd have more of an axe to grind with 
Industry Canada who is the party handing out the contracts than with the
NCF.  Or do you have some personal vendetta against the NCF?

-- 
John Stewart -- Computing and Communications Services, Carleton University
Internet: jstewart@ccs.carleton.ca                       613-520-2600x3707
"Why are so many people trying to get ahead when they already have one?"