Re:

 

On Thu, Dec 9, 2010 at 2:12 PM, John I Jones <j*@usjoneses.com> wrote:

Irisregister is not a free service for a couple of reasons. First because we have to pay for the internet hosting service. They after all have to buy the hardware and software and pay connection fees and people to service the system and are in business to make a profit on their investment. Second: We had to pay a programming service to develop the irisregister service, database, web interface etc. So there were some implementation costs as well as ongoing maintenance and hosting costs. Hard money expenditures that are not funded by the registration fees.

$10.00 a year is not an exorbitant fee. There are still,  even after 7 years of irisregister, many individuals who want the hard copy R&I's. I have no doubt that more and more people will give  up hard copy for electronic versions as time goes by, but irisregister provides a valuable time saving service.

 
Just for comparison, the Aril Society hosts something similar on their website.  It's free to the public at large, not just ASI members.

http://www.arilsociety.org/index.pl?Checklist

Monthly web hosting fees are small nowadays, so I don't even charge back that cost to the ASI.  Nor do I charge back any costs for hardware, software, ink, or my personal time for developing & debugging.  I find that the other rewards of doing this job (I'm the webmaster that developed the ASI website & checklist search engine) more than make up for any financial inconvenience.

The true stars of this program are the volunteers that compile the ASI annual checklist.  My contribution is small by comparison.

I have no personal need of using Irisregister or registering irises with AIS or anything, so I don't have a strong opinion on the issue of charging.  But still I tend to agree with Jamie's comments.  In my own words: It seems that even though AIS is in the 21st century, they are still behind the times.  This information should be free.

Regards,
Dennis

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