On 5/19/2011 11:01 AM, graham wrote:
> Replying to Jonathan's mail rather at random, since several people are
> saying similar things.
>
> 1. 'Free resources can vanish any time.' But so can commercial ones,
> which is why LOCKSS was created. This isn't an insoluble issue or one
> unique to free resources.

You missed my point.  The difficulty we have of dealing with the 
"breaking resources" problem is proportional to the number of 
vendors/sources we are dealing with.  Dealing with 10 or 100 vendors is 
hard; dealing with 1000s of sources is harder.  Ignoring free stuff is 
one easy way of not having to deal with this. (Not neccesarily an 
optimal one!).

I do not disagree that there are huge advantages to free resources of 
course!  Just trying to analyze some of the practical difficulties, 
which are not simply irrational prejudices or what have you.  Also 
didn't mean to say that any of the challenges are insoluble or unique to 
free resources.