Thanks for your comments guys! As you've probably noticed, this topic usually appears every few months, either on the PEG email lists or the comp.databases.progress news group. Up until now I usually stay out of these discussions, as I am tired of the debate as well and know that my comments will not influence the few very vocal peggers that think I am the devil himself.
I also realize that many people use ProgressTalk.com and find this site very helpful, and am thankful for that. Right now we have over 4,200 registered users and are averaging about 500 posts each month, or about 25 on the average work day. This is about 15-20% of the number of messages that appear on PEG. Also, in reviewing November's web site statistics, we had 51.612 visitors during the month viewing over 670,000 pages. This is probably more web traffic then all other Progress related sites combined, with exception of peg.com and progress.com.
I was a PEG member since around 1993 or 94, and was one of the first paid members when they started asking for membership fees to help run the site. I decided to started ProgressTalk.com back in 1999 for many reasons, the main one being a lack of any type of a searchable archive of the PEG.
It was annoying to see the same questions and answers coming up constantly, and most PEG members would ask about creating a searchable archive on a regular basis. Even though there was a big demand for this feature, nothing ever seemed to be said about implementing it, other then saying it was a good idea and it was being worked on.
I also highly preferred web-based discussion forums over email, because of all the advantages this format brings with it, like not having to deal with organizing and reading alot of email, and having discussions contained inside of a thread, where it is much easier to follow and review, and being able to have more forums to help keep things better organized.
I certainly wasn't the first person to create a searchable PEG archive either. I know of at least one person and one user group which both maintained a public archive for short periods of time. Both sites were closed down by the owners after receiving pressure from a few people in the PEG community.
When I started ProgressTalk.com, I also got pressure from a few people asking me outright to shut the site down. One person even had his lawyer write a threatening letter.
So why do I mirror PEG email posts here at all? Because there are many very valuable discussions that take place there, and they deserve to be seen and read by as many people in the Progress community as possible. I (and I'm sure many other ProgressTalk users) still actively read PEG discussions, however I prefer to do it on the web site over email.
A few people have made the argument I am "stealing" content, or "hiding" the original source of the messages. Almost all good online discussion groups that I know of and follow are mirrored to multiple locations, including email, USENET or private news servers, and web interfaces. There are also services like DejaNews and others that are dedicated to providing archiving and reading of online discussion groups. Even Progress Software has both a news and web interface to all PEG messages.
As for the comment I am trying to hide the original source of the messages, I've recently created a new PEG category where all PEG messages are stored, to make the origin of the message much more clear. PEG messages are also excluded from the new daily topics list, while still open for reading and searching.
Another final thing you might want to consider is that the PEG is a business, and that the ProgressTalk.com is offered completely free of charge, even for job / resume postings. I've invested my money into starting and running ProgressTalk and don't expect anything in return for it other then to have people find it helpful.
I bought a dedicated Dell PowerEdge 1650, with Dual P-III CPUs, 1GB of RAM and 54GB total SCSI disk space to power this site for about $3,500. I also pay $35/month for co-location rack space and about $150 month for an average of 50GB of bandwidth each month.
Yes, there are banner ads running at the top of the pages, but the majority of them were provided free of charge. The few paid banners that are advertising Progress related products don't even come close to covering the monthly bandwidth costs... however breaking even with my costs are were never a goal nor will it even be an issue.
PEG currently has what I would image a very similar, if maybe slightly higher, monthly cost structure. However, each and every job posting email, which averages about 15-20 a month, costs $60 each. Also, they have voluntary membership fees for $45/year per person, with I'm sure several hundred paid members.
Hopefully this will at least explain my feelings and motivation, and of course people have the right to disagree with me... but then again, I'm not going to let that influence what I do.
Thanks for listening and your support!
Chris Schreiber
ProgressTalk.com Administrator