Why does Kagi proclaim that it is not woman or minority owned?
Early versions of the Register program printed a statement on the payment form that unintentionally sounded as though we were against woman and minorities. We are not against woman and minorities. Here's what happened.In the US, orgnaizations engaged in research for the government get tax breaks when they do business with a woman owned, minority owned or small business. The applicable laws are the "Small Business Act of 1958" and "Public Law 95-507". Kagi includes a statement in the registration form stating that it is not woman or minority owned because company purchasing agents would leave a message on our answering machine asking us to call them back so that they could purchase software from us. After incurring long distance phone charges by playing telephone tag with these people, they would ask their important question, "Is Kagi a small business, woman or minority owned?". Then they would indicate that they would be sending in their $15 payment in the next couple of days.
Kagi makes $0.60 on a $15 payment and typical long distance phone charges are around $3 so for each company that has this question, Kagi loses $2.40. Not a good way to run a business.
The original statement was added into the registration form in an attempt to short cut the costly phone tag game so that Kagi would not lose money processing these payments. Unfortunately my original phrasing of the information was offensive to lots of people. It sounded as though we were proud that we were not woman or minority owned. That was not the message we wanted to convey. (The sad part is that we got a few notes from people who were glad that we were not a woman or minority owned business.) We got lots of suggestions as to how to improve the wording and the latest versions of Register should have a phrasing that states:
"The US government does not classify Kagi as a women owned business or as a minority owned business. It is classified as a small service business owned by an individual."
Thanks for taking the time to find out
Modification Date: Tuesday, December 17, 1996