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Is there any reason why a project like this wouldn't be open sourced? Follow up question, how does a site like this have a $500k annual budget? I was napkin ca

• cooper12 10y ago
  Looking at it from a Cornell point-of-view, the most innocuous reason I can think of is that they want a canonical library of papers that others can mirror rather than researchers having to search each individual university's arXiv. If they let others fork and set up their own servers it could lead to interesting modifications/applications but it would no longer be in their control and might make the preprint locations fragmented. (and the other servers might not have the same moderating standards) The other more greedy explanation is always money. Of course open source isn't antithetical to profit, but as mentioned before you do lose control and maybe Cornell doesn't want competition. Even if the project was started with the best of intentions, they still need to make it self-sufficient and maybe even profitable so they probably decided it's in their best interest. Of course this is all just me speculating.
• frumiousirc 10y ago
  It must be mostly salary and maybe a small fraction bandwidth. Hardware costs must be in the noise. For the salary, don't forget university overhead. 200K alone might be going to support Ginsbarg. A software developer + sysadmin could be at a similar rate. Again, with overhead included. Praise be the bureaucracy, and give onto it its tithe.