I ran across an article of interest. Bastow and Leonelli address the ‘dire’ funding situation for databases across biology and proposes some business models to deal with long-term sustainability (which, as I recall from our NorComm interviews, is of great concern to researchers). The authors also argue that agencies and governements operate under an obsolete assumption that cyper-based infrastructure can be treated as merely another branch of the research process or as an ‘inexpensive’ service that can be outsourced.
‘Sustaining digital infrastructure’ by Ruth Bastow and Sabina Leonelli is published in EMBO Reports 11 (10), 2010, pp.730-734.