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FR was started on zero capital. It was a hobby that has grown terribly out of control. It was a one man shop when I set it up. Amy came in later to help me administer it, then John took over the programming a couple years later and redesigned and rewrote it all at least three times since. He built the servers it runs on. Now it may be that if we had the money we could order all new equipment and redesign and rewrite the software again with an eye for making it all bullet proof, but that would require lots of money and probably hiring some additional talent and it would require time. But we have no money and no access to money. And we are reluctant to take on any additional debt.

Now we could go commercial. We could sell ads. We could sell subscriptions or memberships, We could sell t-shirts and hats. But the moment we do, we invite scrutiny and copyright lawsuits. Before going commercial we would have to scrub our archives of any possible copyright violations. And we’d have to tighten up our current operations to make sure no one posts anything that could get us into trouble with any publisher of stories, photos, images, etc. And with sharks like Righthaven swimming around, there will always be room for trouble. And going commercial still wouldn’t guarantee enough income to build and maintain a paid staff, bullet proof software, redundant systems, etc.

I’m an old dog and I like to keep it simple. We have a nice little system here. We are comfortable with the hardware and our software and our providers and it works fairly well. Actually, very well. We have some occasional problems and have been down a few times but as I said, there are no guarantees that if we had double or triple the size of our hardware or our staff that we still would not suffer some downtime occasionally. It happens.

And we’re perfectly comfortable with donor funding at a shoestring level. I’d hate to complicate the thing by going commercial. We are grassroots and it makes sense to me to keep it all grassroots and uncomplicated if we possibly can.

I see no reason whatsoever to panic about our systems our staffing or our funding.

You’re talking multiple millions spent to create&maintain FR and its infrastructure and functions.

Well Done, Sir! That’s stimulating the old economy!

The ROI on your investment and your family’s as well can never be adequately calculated nor appreciated as much as it should be by this nation and Republic for which we claim as our own.

Old dogs know best. They know where the shade is and they know how to use it.

To those who would wish to take FR to another level,, perhaps it is time to do battle with new technologies as the Robinsons have and see what you can deliver.

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as to - ‘we’re perfectly comfortable with donor funding at a shoestring level.’

Charlie Chaplin did pretty well on the same diet, shoestrings and sole.. ;-)

Giddyup.