Disbandment: It's bad for business
Entry posted by crushtania
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Some in the community have been out for Pacifican blood for a very long time now - I can see the pain they have caused to a significant proportion of Planet Bob and I can sympathize with their want for revenge; but calls for disbandment of a (formerly) sanctioned alliance will fall flat due to one simple fact: money.
If any of you have seen the NPO forums, they are well designed and use a full version of IPB. They also run a radio station and own a domain name. Domain registration may only cost US$10 or for a year for a TLD, significantly more for a 2LD. Back in TAB, the CIS generously hosted our 2nd forums with a full version of IPB Boards on their server (Thanks Quicksilver!) - once we heard that the IPB licence was due to expire, we had to find a new home - we used freeware boards (phpbb) and Commander John, a TABbie who runs several web projects and businesses gave us some room on some of his servers. Using up bandwidth for a radio station was out of the question.
I can only imagine that NPO with the traffic they attract to their forums; the running of their Radio Free Pacifica and their maintenance of a full version of IPB, domain registration and other costs means that the leadership sink a lot of their actual money into keeping "NPO" afloat. If they were made to disband, money already spent goes unused. Once a licence or a domain has been purchased, one must wait for it to expire - there are no refunds to be had.
Whether Pacifica deserve to be dissolved by the Karma forces or not is up for continued debate. But if I were being told to disband after I had set up cheap Invision Free forum that can be left to gather spambots and eventual deletion, I'd probably do so to save the NS of my comrades. But if I had spent my actual money on the venture, you'd probably get a vehement "GTFO."
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