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Demise Of The Premier .NET community site
Seems like something has horribly gone wrong at ASPFriends.com. The site is being closed as a result of a break down in negotiations with Microsoft over support for funding this developer community forum which has over 73000 members who post over 12 million messages a month regarding MS development. The primary reason for this break down seems to be do with the contract that had to be signed to receive funding. I'm no lawyer and I've not seen the entire contract but it seems like it contains clauses which basically state "at our discretion, with 30 days notice we can terminate this contract and take ownership of your site".
What prevent Micro$oft from picking up the site after it is closed?
By the way I linked to the forums to remind people where MS is emphasizing, delibrately and calculatingly. It is not to be kind to MS it is to be kind to the users that need support in some form. Many of my users don't know there are forums that MS is emphasizing in favor of our support. I will add links to P2P and Developmentor mailing lists to not forget the users that need support. The users are why I started this, and they should not be forgotten. And a "one shot 6 month deal" won't satisfy. I just wanted people to know why I closed, and what MS thinks is better. It would take a lot for me to "put the genie back in the bottle" - they have already shown their true faces in "out competing" a site that is trying to helpthem instead of co-operating with the many support options as I do. MS presented a Draconian contract to the high tech equivalent of a soup kitchen helping their sers and opens a competing soup kitchen and refuses and delays to mention the other soup kitchen to needy coders. I am fine walking away, but I want PEOPLE to know where they need to get help from.
I don't care whether MS pays for it - their customers are affected mostly and it is one less thing for me to do each month :) I was going to close it a while ago for a varity of reasons and MS contacted me and insisted that it should stay and they wanted to support it through June of 2003 no strings attached. Then they chaed their mind.
I am 100% fine with them not supporting it and breaking their promise, and the story ends in December and I am 100% fine with that.
I just made the FAQ to let people know why it closes then. It affects 73,000 people and they deserve a true accounting as to why it closed.
I learned a lot and invented a lot of new moderation tools like Our Moderate Tool and many useful private tools that make mailing list easy to manage. I intend to launch a bunch of very low volume lists using those tool in areas in non-MS ares I love that don't have such a large audience that the server capacity has to be so high and costly.
First, while Charles may be ethical (I cannot comment on his ethics, as I have not dealt with him in busines ... have you?), remember that it was Charles who intiated the conversation to have Microsoft fund 100% of his site, not Microsoft. It was also his decision not to accept the deal, which is part of doing business.
Second, the ASP Friends list has helped him build his training business. While I cannot put a money value on how much his ASP Friends site has aided his business, only a fool would believe that it has had no beneficial impact. The problem with the site is it has became a sucking money hole, as it is become very popular. Because of this, Charles asked Microsoft to foot 100% of the bill and they asked for something in return for their money. Rather than negotiate, he took his case to the court of popular opinion, and there are plenty of people who would gladly take the case without all of the facts.
As for such a fine man, you obviously have not met Charles. He is prone to interrupting technical presentations to hawk books he has reviewed, as well as throw in his two cents. He is rather self-absorbed and very prone to temper tantrums. In conversations I had with him last year, he expressed complete disdain for any method of helping the community other than his lists, which I took as highly elitist. As such, I am not sure he is such an exemplary example of the open source spirit.
I do not deny the value of ASP Friends. While I personally find email lists to be annoying at times, the lists were well filtered. I am sure the lists will be missed. If he were serious about wanting to keep them up, he could have negotiated the contract details. However, I do not see that any of us that own sites DESERVE to get 100% support for nothing.