MAIN is a non-profit organization whose mission is to establish and operate efficiently a community-access computer network. The purpose of this network is information sharing and communication among the people and governmental, educational, commercial, cultural, religious, and civic organizations, in order to enhance lives and make the best use of community resources.

MAIN is a non-profit corporation registered with the State of Texas, with filed formal Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws. It has received 501(c)(3) non-profit status from the Internal Revenue Service.

Board Members President Wayne McDilda   Vice President Sue Soy   Treasurer Terry Dyke   Secretary Mike Beeman   Executive Director Gene Crick	Supporters Terry Dyke, Webmaster Wayne McDilda - Systems Support Public, academic, and private libraries, corporations, and individuals support MAIN.
Telephone: 512-850-MAIN (6246) Postal address: P. O. Box 328, Bastrop TX 78602	Email: office AT main.org Webmaster: webmaster AT main.org

A group of people, composed largely of librarians, decided Austin needed a community network and began meeting together to share ideas and formalize the community network. The Articles of Incorporation were signed in January of 1994. Bylaws were signed in March of 1994.

Originators included:

Miriam Blum of the Texas Medical Association Library,
Lisa deGruyter of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission,
Robert Kilgore, student,
Drew Racine, University of Texas at Austin,
Jean Hamrick, University of Texas at Austin,
Martha Richardson, Department of Information Resources Library,
Dale Ricklefs, Round Round Public Library,
Sue Soy, Austin Public Libary,
Julie Walker, Round Rock Independent School District, and
Ron Wyllys, University of Texas at Austin.

Many others became involved in the development of MAIN during its first year.

Drew Racine and Jean Hamrick both worked very hard on an initial effort to contact and communicate with similar community networks. Since then, many community networking "connectors" have been established to help community networkers keep track of one another. Sue Soy lists a number of these networks on her personal website.

MAIN is not a Free-Net. But MAIN definitely IS committed to pursuing some of the important concepts associated with Free-Nets, such as the concept of a community's sharing information and the concept of making information accessible to the entire community. "Free-Net" is a trademarked term referring to an organization formally affiliated with NPTN, the National Public Telecomputing Network. MAIN has chosen to be independent of such affiliations. Austin Free-Net, whose emphasis is on providing access to the Internet, is affiliated with NPTN. MAIN's goals are complementary to those of AFN, and MAIN supports their efforts.

MAIN's policy is that anyone should be able to use MAIN's basic information-sharing services at no charge. As MAIN grows, some services may be added that will be expensive enough and valuable enough that a fee may be charged; a possible example is access to the Internet. The intent is that such fees would recover costs. MAIN is a public, not-for-profit organization.