Pretty close to the beginning of the month, where I used to, and
once again will, mail out news on TLG and member contact info, IP
maps, that sort of thing.

It's still a little raw here, swamped with work. TLG now has it's
own host, as unreliable as it is (built from donated, in some cases
antique, parts). tlg.org allows me to delegate some tasks (finally!).
It is the name server for TLG members, primary and secondary. It's
a central place for non-members to get information. It holds the
"how to" docs I've been slowly building. Four people have accounts
on it; myself, our new intern Randy (Flesh@tlg.org), Tim Pozar,
and Stu Grossman.

ITEM: There are some useful aliases, which I'll expand upon slightly
in the contact list.

ITEM: The world IP map is kinda sketchy. The information is accurate,
there's just not much to guide you. I have the components, it will
just take a while to get together.

ITEM: I will announce a meeting for 19 January, at 444 Market,
after which we can retire to a local pub or something. We need to
work out an agenda, I have some items for it.


IMPORTANT ITEM: I just mailed out 28 invoices, on 31 Dec 93. We're
still not out of the startup phase, and I really need to get that
cash, as soon as possible if not sooner.  I also sent out statements
to most people who made loans in the form of pay-ahead.  If you
see any discrepancies please let me know! This month, February and
March will be the worst, we shoudl be running positive then, by
some small amount. (Then the next month is April, tax month, and
another bunch of fun begins.) FWIW, business overhead alone (tracking
accounts, billing, banking, etc) runs about 8hrs/week, though this
last one took twice that, since I had to untangle the pay-aheads
and generate a balance sheet.

Which brings me right to this point -- (200 lines of it, sorry!)

			* * * * *

The discourse this past week in this list was interesting, and a
bit alarming to me. I've been meaning to write about this, but I
literally have not had the time.

Plainly stated, we are not a cooperative, and have never been. As
much as the word was used in '93, there was never really any signs
of cooperative activity. I mean in the formal sense of "cooperative",
not that we don't work together...

I have worked with two major cooperative groups; the '89 Anarchist
Gathering, and Nomenus, the Radical Faerie corporation that owns
and operates 80 acres of land in Oregon as a sanctuary. The Gathering
was put on by a handful of autonomous groups accross the US, one
of which was the Bound Together Books collective.  Nomenus is more
interesting, and pointful, in that they have a 501(c)3 corp. that
owns substantial property; they take their collective process
seriously. All ~250 members of Nomenus are *board members*! And
they work by full consensus, mainly through groups of smaller
committees, and any one person can block.

Collectives move slooowly. It took Nomenus a *year* to build a
bridge.  They took *everything* into account. It was frustrating. Until
it was done vehicles could not enter the land during rainy season.
Looking back over the last five or so years of decisions, they've
made very few bad ones. The price: as Ed says, slower, or rasher,
inexperienced members create distractions and make-work for other
members. The result:  a sense of community, the ability to affect
the outcome. Requirement: a basic vision and path, a closely knit
core group to start, and the ability to bring more people into your
vision. Drawbacks: it attracts process-junkies and those able to
hold out win.  The Gathering took six months to find a building to
rent for a one-week venture, and ultimately did an *excellent* job.

What we have is none of that. A lot of would-be coop intent is to
make a set of rules to restrain people from doing bad or stupid
things (both locally defined). We have an environment where, a year
to make a decision means a constantly moving target. We have
fast-moving, intricately-interconnected systems, people and hardware
following Moore's Law squared.

And I can tell you for fact, it's too late now anyways. You don't
"become" a coop, that's fantasy. At our core is *money* dammit,
plain old money.

IFF net connections were cheap and easy, we wouldn't be doing any
of this.  Even in 1990, you could get a net connection. It simply
cost too much! TLG did not pre-exist our individual needs for
networking, though many of us have similar or compatible goals.
We came together around access and low-cost first, each other
secondarily, if at all. Them's the facks, for the most part, and
not in the slightest a complaint or liability.

Consider the slight detail that 75% of the people reading this,
and previous ramblings on The Little Garden, haven't a clue as to
what we're talking about; except for Rich Morin's brief history
document, there *is no* social glue to build around. I'm not
complaining in *any way*.

			* * * * *

More disturbing to me, personally, is the almost-offhand way that
more than one person tossed off, "someone might want to get paid"
for supporting TLG's infrastructure.  Hello!

Nearly no TLG members were around last September 92 when John
Gilmore and I drafted my "job description". I'd gladly re-issue a
copy of it, if I only had one, as it was lost in my disk crash'n'burn
this past summer.  Hopefully someone else has a copy.

Basically, when I started doing this, we had very vague plans of
expanding TLG (vague in detail). In Dec93 I was making $420/mo,
around Jun93, $600?/mo. I started out with a DOS machine, and out
of pocket built a unix machine and got on the net directly (about
Feb 93). The work was about 20hrs/week. It was recognized that the
pay was shitty, but the work was laissez-faire, and I was on the
net.

The work steadily increased, until by summer we had accumulated
quite a few members, relative to Dec93, and then incurred the Wrath
of Rick (Adams). Expansion became explicit.

About 1 September 1993, the work became quite definitely full-time.
I was still making $700/mo or less. The current-TLG was being
researched by me, Pozar, Gilmore and Randy Bush. Every step we took
it became incredibly more complex than we realized; we had grossly
underestimated literally every component. We were having sporadic
but not infrequent meetings at the time, and the info-dumps became
more and more baroque, as the core group learned more, it became
harder to communicate it to the group at large.

Each time, the group charged us to go off and do the next step. At
the same time, the gulf between what we thought we were doing and
what we were *actually* doing became unbreachable -- the group that
built/ran the net and the members.

We were under time pressure. Alternet had told us "find another
provider"; and there were other windows of opportunity we saw open
that we weren't sure would stay open; and we began to realize just
how long it would take to actually complete, once we said "go".
The knowledge required to build TLG in Oct/Nov 93 became exceedingly
arcane, and the group and the core were hopelessly disconnected.

For better or worse, was this? You tell me.

			* * * * *

Back to money (as if we ever left it).

Back to Aug93, when the TLG members said "go" and we committed to
building TLG. My little part time almost-a-job leaped into a
more-than-full-time job. I DID NOT AND DO NOT WANT A REAL JOB. If
I wanted one, I have enough talents to get one, thank you. Rather,
I value other things.

The naive intent back then was, there will be this startup hassle,
lasting months, then it will subside. Duh! It will NOT subside!
Now I have a job! My salary leaped from about $800 (it was proportional
to the number of members) to a fixed $1000 about Oct93, where it
is now. It was left, even more vaguely than the growth plans, that
I would be compensated somehow in the future.

To be plain and simple after these hundred lines -- yes, I flatly
expect to be paid for this! What on *earth* possible motive could
I have?

In summer-93, we envisioned ourselves, as far as I can tell, in a
pretty relaxed manner, downtime was viewed for the most part
casually, on the smaller branches anyways (which was sensible
considering some of the hardware we were using then!) I handled
about $1000/mo gross, most of which went to my salary, but I also
bought NOS boxen, cables, outlet strips, generated documentation
and proceedures, etc. All of the actual cost of the backbone was
hidden, paid for by Cygnus, Gilmore, Jim Wilson, TIS, and some of
the original TLG members.

In Jan94, we are a reliable and growing network provider. Arbitrary
downtime is most decidedly NOT tolerated, and we have all new,
reliable hardware, and I'm putting organizational systems into
place for the rest of it. I pay $5000/mo in simple overhead, 80%
of which is leased lines and Sprint and office overhead. This is
not a hobby.

When we made this leap from big "hobby" (though we never really
were) to a real network service provider, I'm sorry, it requires
full-time employees. Me, at the moment. Maybe some people hear
"TLG" and imagine last spring, where all TLG members could actually
eat dinner in The Little Garden Restaurant in Palo Alto, talk to
each other.

We intentionally built our way away from that model, and the chickens
is now home to roosts. It is not an option for me to go back to
part time work on TLG, nor to find other income, even. In short,
yes, I will be compensated for this work, though it's not clear what
this means yet.

My guess is, all this may surprise or alarm older TLG members, but
newer ones, say connected after Sep93, will be alarmed in the other
direction, that we're not just assuming we're a profit-making
business! Just my guess.

And last, just thought I'd reiterate some things, that I don't
consider this a business to be pumped for profit, that some of us
still see TLG as a socially and politically signifigant network
provider, pushing the state of things not by competing head-on,
but by setting precedent, such as the resell-ability and no
restrictions on use. Though if we don't get explicit on THAT as
well I can easily see it getting lost in the haze of the future.