It's worse than that.

The price we were quoted for hosting seems to have been picked so it can 
be offered with a 90% discount when bundled with a package deal with 
other OCLC products; buying into the on-going balkanization of the industry.

cheers
stuart

On 01/02/14 16:24, Roy Tennant wrote:
> When it comes to hedging bets, I'd sure rather hedge my $50,000 bet than my
> $500 one. Just sayin'.
> Roy
>
>
> On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 6:04 PM, BWS Johnson <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
>
>> Salvete!
>>
>>        Tisn't necessarily Socialist to hedge one's bets. Look at what Wall
>> St. experts advise when one is unsure of whether to hold or sell. Monopoly
>> is only ever in the interest of those that hold it.
>>
>>         Short term the aquarium is enticing, but do you enjoy your
>> collapsed dorsal fin?
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Brooke
>>
>> ------------------------------
>> On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 6:10 PM EST Salazar, Christina wrote:
>>
>>> I think though that razor thin budgets aside, the EZProxy using community
>> is vulnerable to what amounts to a monopoly. Don't get any ideas, OCLC
>> peeps (just kiddin') but now we're so captive to EZProxy, what are our
>> options if OCLC wants to gradually (or not so gradually) jack up the price?
>>>
>>> Does being this captive to a single product justify community developer
>> time?
>>>
>>> I think so but I'm probably just a damn socialist.
>>>
>>> On Jan 31, 2014, at 1:36 PM, "Tim McGeary" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Even with razor thin budgets, this is a no brainer.  May they need
>> decide
>>>> between buying 10 new books or license EZProxy?  Possibly, but if they
>> have
>>>> a need for EZProxy, that's still a no brainer - until a solid OSS
>>>> replacement that includes as robust a developer /support community comes
>>>> around.  But again, at $500/year, I don't see a lot of incentive to
>> invest
>>>> in such a project.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 3:55 PM, Riley Childs <[log in to unmask]
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> But there are places on a razor thin budget, and things like this throw
>>>> them off ball acne
>>>>
>>>> Sent from my iPhone
>>>>
>>>>> On Jan 31, 2014, at 3:32 PM, "Tim McGeary" <[log in to unmask]>
>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> So what's the price point that EZProxy needs to climb to make it more
>>>>> realistic to put resources into an alternative.  At $500/year, I don't
>>>> even
>>>>> have to think about justifying it.  At 1% (or less) of the cost of
>>>> position
>>>>> with little to no prior experience needed, it doesn't make a lot of
>> sense
>>>>> to invest in an open source alternative, even on a campus that heavily
>>>> uses
>>>>> Shibboleth.
>>>>>
>>>>> Tim
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 1:36 PM, Ross Singer <[log in to unmask]>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Not only that, but it's also expressly designed for the purpose of
>>>> reverse
>>>>> proxying subscription databases in a library environment.  There are
>>>> tons
>>>>> of things vendors do that would be incredibly frustrating to get
>> working
>>>>> properly in Squid, nginx, or Apache that have already been solved by
>>>>> EZProxy.  Which is self-fulfilling: vendors then cater to what EZProxy
>>>> does
>>>>> (rather than improving access to their resources).
>>>>>
>>>>> Art Rhyno used to say that the major thing that was inhibiting the
>>>>> widespread adoption of Shibboleth was how simple and cheap EZProxy was.
>>>> I
>>>>> think there is a lot of truth to that.
>>>>>
>>>>> -Ross.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 1:23 PM, Kyle Banerjee <
>> [log in to unmask]
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> EZproxy is a self-installing statically compiled single binary
>>>>> download,
>>>>>> with a built-in administrative interface that makes most common
>>>>>> administrative tasks point-and-click, that works on Linux and Windows
>>>>>> systems, and requires very little in the way of resources to run.  It
>>>>>> also
>>>>>> has a library of a few hundred vendor stanzas that can be copied and
>>>>>> pasted
>>>>>> and work the majority of the time.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> To successfully replace EZproxy in this setting, it would need to be
>>>>>> packaged in such a way that it is equally easy to install and
>>>> maintain,
>>>>>> and
>>>>>> the library of vendor stanzas would need to be developed as apache
>>>>> conf.d
>>>>>> files.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> This. The real gain with EZProxy is that configuring it is crazy easy.
>>>>> You
>>>>>> just drop it in and run it -- it's feasible for someone with no
>>>>> experience
>>>>>> in proxying or systems administration to get it operational in a few
>>>>>> minutes. That is why I think virtualizing a system that makes
>> accessing
>>>>> the
>>>>>> more powerful features of EZProxy easy is a good alternative.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> kyle
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Tim McGeary
>>>>> [log in to unmask]
>>>>> GTalk/Yahoo/Skype/Twitter: timmcgeary
>>>>> 484-294-7660 (cell)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Tim McGeary
>>>> [log in to unmask]
>>>> GTalk/Yahoo/Skype/Twitter: timmcgeary
>>>> 484-294-7660 (cell)
>>
>


-- 
Stuart Yeates
Library Technology Services http://www.victoria.ac.nz/library/