Re: A philosophical question about large directory structures

At 14:00 24.06.99 -0700, Tim Howes wrote:

> > A "directory of directories" would be nice, but the practical problem of
> > agreeing on who should run it and in which country it should live is a
> > recipe for disaster.
>
>The problem is thinking of this directory of directories
>as some kind of public service that is tied to some
>governmental responsibility. The government (in the US,
>anyway) no longer funds NSFNet, DNS, or other key infrastructure
>components. All those things have been privatized. If
>we want something like a directory of directories to
>exist, we need to figure out the business model behind it.
>If there is no incentive, then ultimately maybe it does
>not really need to exist.                 -- Tim

My estimate of the cost of a "directory of directories" in Norway is
on the order of USD 200.000 per year.
One entrant trying to gain a foothold in the directory services market
in Norway reputedly spent USD 2.000.000 just for data cleaning - and
STILL has lousy data quality.

We might need to find a different model to apply here; on the macroeconomic
scale, spending millions of dollars to give customers lousy service cannot
possibly be sustainable.

http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/magic-cauldron/ may be one.

             Harald, feeling radical

--
Harald Tveit Alvestrand, Maxware, Norway
[email protected]