Spring '99 Plan the Budget Meeting

Mar 24 05:35 UTC 1999

I think we should have a plan the budget meeting, to decide what our spending
priorities are, for that portion of our income which is in excess of our
regular operating expenses.  Over the last year, we have accumulated about
$1800 in such income, though that number is relatively volatile; if I had
given the same statistic in December, it would have been a negative number.

Still, it's reasonable to expect that our income will average somewhat more
than our operating expenses for the forseeable future, so it would be good
to decide what we'd like to spend it on.

At the board meeting tonight, the date of April 18th (a Sunday) was
tentatively suggested.  Both (remmers & mary) and (janc & valerie) offered
their houses.  Jan & Valerie's house has the advantage (at least some people
think it's an advantage) of being cat-free.

Use this item to suggest things you think we should be spending money on.

response 2 of 28:

Mar 25 20:48 UTC 1999

The problem with the "Plan the Budget" concept is that it presupposes
that we have any vision for where Grex is going.

From a hardware point of view, we don't.

Eventually we are going to outgrow the 4/670.  What happens then?

We could do what we've done in the past, and just get a newer, faster
computer.  But the 4/670 is the end of the line if we want to stay with
SunOS.  It was the last server Sun made that runs SunOS 4.1, and if we
want to go to any faster computer, then we need to leave SunOS and
transistion to a different version of Unix - Solaris, Linux, OpenBSD,
whatever.

The other direction to consider is going toward multiple servers instead
of a single server.  Maybe a separate mail server and a separate http
server.  Maybe dividing users over multiple symmetric servers.  Maybe
running AFS.  Maybe running kerberos.  Maybe not.

Currently, there is no plan for Grex's technical future that all the
staff is signed on to.  Marcus has some ideas and is rumored to be doing
some development, but the rest of the staff knows little about it and
certainly hasn't signed onto his program, whatever it is.

Because of this, it's hard to make plans for buying new hardware.  The
UPS would be a good idea, but aside from that, I think there isn't much
to do except save up the money for when we are finally ready to do
something.

What we really need more than a discussion on how to spend our money, is
a discussion on Grex's technical future.  Whichever way we go, we've got
to do some significant new development work.  Without a plan, it's not
going to happen.