Toronto FreeNet stable now; wish it were co-op, tho

[Chris F.A. Johnson]

On Sat, 29 Nov 2003 verbum-qazKcTl6WRFWk0Htik3J/w at public.gmane.org wrote:

> Incidentally, in the **BEST** of all possible worlds, Toronto
> FreeNet would be a co-op, owned and operated by members in the
> manner of a credit union,

    It is owned by it's members. It is incorporated by the Province of
    Ontario as a not-for-profit corporation.

> with enough commercial and technical muscle to arrange its own
> DSLAMs instead of buying from WizNet.

    That would be nice.

    As it is, the TFN relies on the generosity of Wiznet for its
    bandwidth and co-location.

> Heck: if anything really cried out for a co-op structure, in the
> manner of the classical farmers' and fishermen's co-ops (or indeed
> of those big manufacturing co-ops in Mondragon, Spain), it's the ISP
> world.

    Indeed!

> Think of it: an ISP that's Linux friendly,

    The TFN is Linux friendly, although it is running on FreeBSD
    (thanks to Dave Gilbert of Velocet, who donated a box running that
    OS as well as his and his employees' expertise).

> and has an explicit social charter,

    There has been talk of a mission statement; a beginning of one is
    at <http://www.torfree.net/AboutFN/mission.html>. (The web site is
    woefully under-developed; other things have had priority over the
    last couple of years.)

    The by-laws are at <http://www.torfree.net/AboutFN/bylaws.html>.

    The letter patent should be there, too; I'll get them up ASAP.

> and even arranges things like hardware recycling among members!

    This was done before, but is currently very limited due to lack of
    space. Development of this aspect would be welcome.

> With its employees paid a modest living wage, rather than relegated
> to that oh-so-familiar and oh-so-demeaning world of volunteer work.

    Tell me about it!!!

> If anyone wanted to try making this dream real, I'd do what I could
> to help out.

    Please do.

    The experience with the Free-Net has been that the vast majority
    of members are only interested in an inexpensive ISP.

    I'd like to see more involvement; suggestions are always welcome.

-- 
	Chris F.A. Johnson
	=================================================================
	cfaj-uVmiyxGBW52XDw4h08c5KA at public.gmane.org                      http://cfaj.freeshell.org
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