Summary: Aaron Di Blasi, PMP and Publisher for the Top Tech Tidbits and Access Information Newsletters, offers ongoing funding to support the hosting of the AppleVis website an an archive. Aaron explores the details of how such a transition might be accomplished, and what steps would need to be taken in order to implement it.
Greetings everyone. I have spoken with so many of you about this, but I have no way of knowing if any of these concerned readers are actually a part of the AppleVis Team, which has remained silent since the shutdown announcement and deadline were provided.
I know many of you are concerned about the site being saved as an archive, so I wanted to make this offer here, explicitly, openly, in a public post, so that everyone was aware of it.
👉️ Top Tech Tidbits is willing to donate the funds required to host the AppleVis site as an archive, indefinitely.
To answer the many questions that come hereafter, below is an outline of how such an arrangement might work.
Logistically speaking, this is the very same arrangement that AppleVis would need to enter into with anyone that it chose to host the archive, assuming that it does so.
1.) Domain Transfer: This is not a requirement, but would make the site much more functional and accessible to interact with as an archive if the domain were to remain intact. This would require transferring ownership of the domain to the new hosting provider. We use Ionos.com as our domain registrar. Their .com domains cost $15 per year to keep registered.
2.) Hosting: The AppleVis website can be hosted elsewhere so long as the new hosting provider is provided with the required server specifications. Depending on the these requirements annual hosting can cost as much as $300 / year. But likely much less than that. Even at $300 / year I’m sure we could pull together enough people in the access community to cover it each year. And if we cannot, then we will pay for it ourselves, just like we do for Top Tech Tidbits and Access Information News anytime they are not meeting their Sponsorship cap.
3.) Future Plans: If someone or something viable and trusted were to come forward in the future with a plan to reinstate the site as a service, we would be willing to discuss delegating access to them at that time, so long as the community agrees that the new service provider is up to the task. This would likely be handled by community vote.
4.) Possible Outcomes: I think it is important for everyone to understand that the AppleVis site belongs to David Goodwin. I fully understand that it is a product of and by the access community, and as such takes on a air of “community ownership,” but technically speaking, legally speaking, the AppleVis site belongs to David Goodwin. Not the access community at large. So if David were to decide to let the AppleVis website die on a hard drive somewhere, then that is certainly a decision that is within his purview to make. I, like all of you, sincerely hope that is not the decision that he will choose. But it is his decision. Not ours, and not anyone else’s.
Vision Ireland recently asked “Can AppleVis Be Archived?” The answer is yes. Yes it can. But only if that is what its owner wants.
The Internet Archive is one solution, as they mention, but in my experience access is wonky, to put it mildly. If this information is to be both preserved, and remain easily accessible to anyone trying to find it, it will need to remain hosted.
Even if it’s not us I sincerely hope that AppleVis will make the prudent choice and select someone trusted within the access community to carry the torch forward.
Here’s to that.
