[HCoop-Discuss] On organizing people to get work done

[Adam Chlipala]

Daniel Margolis wrote:
> Why should/do people choose HCoop over, say, Dreamhost? For me, it's 
> mostly about price--most hosting services that offer the featureset 
> HCoop offers also offer far more resources (bandwidth and disk space) 
> than I need and, hence, cost significantly more.
>   

Does anyone else let members build and run whatever daemons they want, 
using whatever programming languages and development tools they want?  
Does anyone else offer AFS?  These are two that pop out at me as likely 
differentiators from any competitors at any price levels.  Both are 
probably bad ideas profit-wise, such that only a non-profit organization 
would work to provide them.

I also like the democratic nature of HCoop, which frees members from 
having to worry about whether the business owners are trying to take 
advantage of them.  I have a feeling that a significant fraction of 
HCoop members feel the same way.

> Given that argument (which might be faulty?), a VPS or similar 
> arrangement might allow us to preserve our big economic advantage 
> (allowing individual members to buy smaller shares at bulk rates) 
> without having to compete with very large commercial providers on 
> maintaining low overheads.
>   

Maybe so.  I think we need staff with particular formal time commitments 
to offer a good service even built on top of VPSes, though.

> I agree with you, Adam, that we can't maintain an equivalent level of 
> service solely with volunteer staff, but it seems unlikely to me that 
> we're going to have operating expenses that are as low as large 
> for-profit competitors', either.

I'm not so sure that this needs to leak out into dues levels.  We can 
continue allowing some members to pledge more.  I think there are enough 
people out there ready to Believe In an organization like ours to offset 
costs for very price-sensitive members to points where we continue 
beating Dreamhost rates.  We might need a period of additional member 
base growth first, though.