[Mailman-Users] billing for mailing lists

[Chris Halverson]

On Tue, 30 Oct 2001 15:12:55 +0100, Jan-Benedict Glaw <jbglaw at lug-owl.de> wrote:

> This is the mailman user's list. Mailman is Free Software, which
> basically means freedom for users, admins etc. If you want to
> earn money with it, you should consider to hire some programmer
> to implement it for you...

I think you misunderstood what he was asking...

This doesn't mean that an ISP could not charge extra for the
service. I know that we do not give away mailing lists as they:

1. Increase support costs due to configuration issues. Yes, even
Mailman's nice web config is "confusing" to most users (heck, I don't
even know how to tweak some of them correctly).

2. Mailing lists require bandwidth which, while cheaper than it has
been in the past, is not free. The cost/benefit for an ISP for mailing
lists is too large to justify.

Those are just two reasons why you may charge for it. As an ISP I
charge for people to use my Apache server. Apache is free, should I
have to give away that service too? It's the same concept.

To answer the originial question, no, there is no "magic formula". See
my two points above and add your own (server requirements, sys admin
knowledge, etc.) and see what you come up with.

cdh

-- 
Chris D. Halverson                         Complete Internet Solutions
(612) 279-2106                             http://www.completeis.com/