srw
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Minutes of the March 22, 1995 Board Meeting
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Mar 24 06:54 UTC 1995 |
Minutes of the Cyberspace Communications, Inc. Board Meeting of 22 March.
Directors attending:
Valerie Mates (popcorn), chair, Steve Weiss (srw), secretary,
STeve Andre' (steve), Rane Curl (rcurl),
John Remmers (remmers), Steve Gibbard (scg).
Others attending:
Rob Henderson (robh), Lousine Shamamian (loulou), Greg Cronau (gregc),
Arnold Barr (adbarr), Marc Conger (aruba), Marcus Watts (mdw).
The meeting was called to order by Valerie shortly after 7PM in the
upstairs room at Zingerman's "Next Door".
Treasurer's report:
There was no treasurer's report because our treasurer was out of town.
501C3 committee report:
Rane Curl announced that the 501C3 committee is now in possession of the
paperwork from the Huron valley Community Network, which recently
achieved 501C3 status.
Rehabilitation committee reoprt:
Rane Curl announced that the committee now has several recipients identified
and is looking for three computers to rehablitate for them.
Publicity Committee report:
There was no news to report.
Newsletter Committee report:
Rane Curl explained that we're in the process of naming the newsletter,
and are waiting for the vote program to be configured to take an on-line vote
to deiced this question. We will be seeking an editor for the newsletter.
Technical Committee report:
* STeve Andre' explained that the router (gryps, pronounced "gryphus")
is not not fully stable, averaging 30 hours between failures.
There are software improvements which have beeen done, and more are planned.
* Valerie has installed new versions of Party, Elm, and Pine.
* Some work was done on getting the two new modems on-line, but the modems
we have have successfully resisted being placed into dial-in service. The
staff is convinced that alternate modems will needed, and recommended that
2 GVC modems be purchased forthis service.
* Mark Conger has written a new 'members' command, which is installed.
This ends the committee reports.
Old Businewss:
** Guest Logins:
Rob Argy had proposed that a guest account be made available
so that new users could explore Grex without having to take out an account.
There was much discussion of the merits, and there was not much
opposition to the concept that was expressed, aside from the technical
difficulties. John Remmers suggested that Rob write a simple guest account
shell. STeve Andre suggested that the technical staff could give this project
some support by implementing minor changes to "login" as needed.
Motion (srw / popcorn):
Authorize Rob Argy (ajax) to develop a technical solution to the
guest account feature, and direct the staff to support this solution
with any reasonable security features needed to imnplement it.
This motion was passed by a vote of 6-0
** Verification Policy:
John Remmers passed out a written summary of "Frequently Expressed Positions"
(FEPs) regarding Grex Verification for Usenet. These positions had been culled
from a review of the on-line discussion.
There was discussion of one aspect, the issue of how much leeway should
the verifier have. No conclusion was reached, although the discussion
largely favored the idea of eliminating leeway, and having an appeal path
available for those who could not meet the existing verification standards.
The general conclusion was that this policy was not yet in a from which could
be placed before the board as a motion. STeve Andre' volunteered to get a
policy in position to cote on by next month.
** Staff Phone Line
STeve Andre' noted that it is getting more difficult to do maintenance
on the system, and to establish root authority in a secure fashion.
He prooposed that a phone line be dedicated for use by the staff, to be
connected to a serial port on gryps, which thus permits a number of staff
functions to be administered remotely which cannot be done today without
a visit to the dungeon.
There was some discussion of alternate schemes that might also help in this
area. There was discussion of the cost, which is $42 for installation, and
$16 per month. There would be no modem cost, as one of the modems which is
unsuitable for general dial in service could be used for this service.
This question was tabled until next month.
** New Co-op co-Fairwitness.
Four users had expressed an interest in serving as fairwitness for the co-op
conference. These users are sidhe, nephi, eeyore, and omni.
Rarely has Grex been faced with an abundance of volunteers
for this function. There is no policy for choosing a new fairwaitness.
The incumbent fairwitness, TS Taylor (tsty), who will be serving together with
the chosen nominee, had requested that the board select one of these four.
The board agreed that it would decide this question by taking two secret
ballots. The first to reduce the field to two, and the second to decide
the winner.
On the first ballot the highest vote count belonged to user nephi (4).
Since this was a simple majority of the votes cast, no second election
was required, and nephi was declared the winner, and new co-fw with tsty
of the co-op conference.
** New Publicity Committee chair.
Misti Anslin (mta) who has acted as publicity chair in the past, had expressed
on-line her willingness to resume in that role. The board agreed by
acclamation that she should do so. The opinion was expressed that the
publicity committee should be focusing on developing local usage, as we have
acquired extensive publicity on the internet for non-local users.
** Apprentice CFadm
Our primary Conference administrator is currently John Remmers, and
Valerie Mates is the backup cfadm. Both of these people expressed their desire
to move away from this function and to train others to take their place.
On-line discussion had produced this list of candidates:
helmke, omni, robh, nephi, davel, carl, and tsty.
John Remmers pointed out that certain unix file system skills are needed
for this position, as it comes with the authority to change the bbs
file hierarchy.
After much discussion, the board agreed by acclamation to appoint
Scott Helmke (helmke) and Dave Lovelace (davel) as new cf-adm trainees.
** Upgrading the Hayes Modems to V.34
STeve Andre reported that ICnet has upgraded one of our modems for us.
The cost of the upgrade to the other modem is $50, and well within the
budgetary limits of the staff discretionary fund. It was left to staff
to authorize this.
** JCC Sale
The table has been rented. STeve Andre' is coordinating the efforts
associated with this project, which takes place this weekend. No board
action is needed.
** Budget proposals
Steve Weiss read a portion of the minutes from the Budget Proposal meeting
that had been held on March 5th. There were three items which were detailed
in those minutes for which board action is required to authorize spending.
Each of these was moved in turn as follows:
Motion: (srw/popcorn) Authorize $500 to purchase 32 MB of RAM to replace
the 32 MB we are currently borrowing.
This motion passed by a vote of 6-0.
Motion: (popcorn/srw) Authorize $500 for the purchase of 5 new modems, and
authorize the installation of 3 new telephone lines for the hunt group,
which will cost a total of $48/month plus installation (if any).
This motion passed by a vote of 6-0.
Motion: (popcorn/rcurl) Authorize a total of $1250 for staff to obtain a
Sparc CPU card, Disk drive, and other required hardware for upgrading Grex
to a Sun-4.
This motion passed by a vote of 6-0.
Further expenditures were deemed beyond the reach of the general
fund, but could be considered if a fundraising effort were successful.
It was decided not to begin a fundrasinig effort now, because the CPU upgrade
project represented consumption of a great deal of the staff's time over the
next several months.
The projects that were delayed by this action are Usenet, expansion
of the internet link, faster modems, a terminal server, and
additional disk space.
** Grex Joining the WIN Consortium
The board had acted to enter Cyberspace Communications into the WIN
consortium for the purpose of jointly applying for a TIIAP grant.
This action took place in a special meeting on 19 March.
WIN consortium members are Cyberspace Communications, Arbornet, and HVCN.
Arnold Barr (adbarr) chair of the Huron Valley Community Network, HVCN,
was in attendance at this meeting and he explained the history of the HVCN.
The TIIAP grant which the WIN group is applying for is at the
$250,000 level. The question of openness was discussed at some length.
Arnold expressed his opinion that Grant money would not involve
any hazard to the openness of WIN member organizations such as Grex.
New business:
** Michigan Computer Shopper AD.
Rob Argy had requested that we place an ad in the Computer Shopper, as
discussed in item 113. Valerie read the entries that would be made, and
some minor changes were agreed upon.
Moved: (srw/scg) Authorize requesting a listing in the
Michigan Computer Shopper, listing Grex as follows:
1: Title: Grex
2: City: Ann Arbor
3: State: MI
4: Country: USA
5: SysOp: staff@cyberspace.org
6: Phone: (313) 761-3000
7: Hardware: Sun 3/260 running Unix
8: Software: Picospan
9: Modem: 8 lines, Supra 2400
10: Started:
11: Fee: no fee
12: Desc: Conferences, Chat, Internet E-mail, telnet cyberspace.org
This motion passed by acclamation.
** Dungeon inspection
Valerie, STeve Andre, and greg Cronau will maintain contact with the landlord
regarding the upcoming city inspection. There was general agreement that
it was the owner's responsibility to obtain and pay for the building
permit. STeve Andre' proposed that we could make this easier for them by
paying a month's rent in advance, especially since we should be able to
negociate some free months for it.
Moved: (rcurl/popcorn) Authorize an advance payment of rent up to one year.
Votes for: popcorn, steve, rcurl, scg
Against: none
Abstain: remmers, srw
The motion carried 4-0.
The meeting was adjourned somewhat after 10PM.
Respectfully submitted,
-srw (Steve Weiss, secretary)
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