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Peter, I think that's a good point, but OCLC knew upfront that this is the model for this product when they acquired it. So, this should have been part of the calculation when considering the acquisition -- but this component fills a very important part of their overall authentication stack for a lot of their other services (we are talking about Article proxying, but it's used with Illiad, WorldCat Local, WMS -- so it has a lot of different uses and has been enhanced a lot if you are a user of these other services. I think that OCLC does a good job shepherding the development, but I think Andrew hits why it would be useful to have an open alternative. It's very likely that even with an open alternative, you cannot completely divorce yourself from Ezproxy if you use another OCLC services. But I've had a number of times recently where I would have loved the ability to hack the proxy. --tr -----Original Message----- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Peter Murray Sent: Monday, February 3, 2014 4:21 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] EZProxy changes / alternatives ? I think it also useful to think about this from the service provider's perspective. There have been a few calls for enhancements/fixes in this thread, but with no source of ongoing revenue (for self-hosted installations, at least) I don't know how we can realistically expect the service provider to devote resources to those enhancements/fixes. The $500 paid for the perpetual right to run the software is good if you never expect the software to change, particularly for something that has the market saturation that EZproxy does (since there is a decreasing number of new subscribers to pay the bills for added development). The same could be said for paying the way of the technical writers to write documentation for the new features added to the system. Peter -- Peter Murray Assistant Director, Technology Services Development LYRASIS [log in to unmask] +1 678-235-2955 800.999.8558 x2955