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| Author |
Message |
janc
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Grex's Long-Term Plan
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Apr 28 05:27 UTC 1999 |
Last month we talked about having a "Plan the Budget Meeting". This
didn't materialize because of a lack of any ideas posted on-line.
The board feels that we need to develop a longer range plan before we
can do any sensible shorter range planning. Long range issues include:
* Do we stick with a single server, or go toward distributed servers?
Staying with a single server has the problem that we'd have to
transition away from SunOS to some other operating system (Linux or
Solaris or something), because there aren't many SunOS machines that
are faster than our current one. Going to distributed servers
may require various new software like Kerberos, AFS, client/server
versions of Picospan, Backtalk, and party, and so forth. Either
way, there is a lot of software development needed, and it will
likely take more than a year to get done, so we need an advance plan.
* Do we want to try change our emphasis? A suggestion was made to
split Grex into two systems, a conferencing/party system, and an
E-mail. Each would have separate telnet queues. Conferencing
would perhaps be available from the E-mail system, but E-mail would
not be available from the conferencing system. This would limit
the growth of the E-mail service, without impinging on the growth
of the growth of the on-line community. Is this a good idea?
* Do we want Grex to continue to grow at all? If not, how do we
stop it from growing?
We need to start some discussion aimed at producing (one or more) plans
for Grex's future development. This item is meant as a starting point
for that. The board has also tentatively scheduled a face-to-face
"Plan the Future" meeting on Sunday May 23 at the home of Mark Conger.
This meeting will be open to the public.
Whatever plans are created should should probably be put to a membership
vote.
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| 65 responses total. |
keesan
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response 1 of 65:
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Apr 29 15:30 UTC 1999 |
Re not being able to e-mail from the conferences, I often e-mail an individual
in response to something I read in a response. Examples are offering Jon and
Julie (lumen and bookworm) a bed for a week, and sending confused new users
offers of help on how to use grex. (Several have written back). I frequently
switch back and forth between pine and bbs. I get 'new mail' messages. I
don't think separation would be a good idea.
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toking
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response 2 of 65:
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Apr 29 18:38 UTC 1999 |
resp:1 that's avery good point, if I telnet into Grex and something
really catches my eye I like being able to do a !mail right then before
I forget what it was that I wanted to say (this coming from the guy with
the attention span of a 3 year old on carck)
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toking
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response 3 of 65:
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Apr 29 18:38 UTC 1999 |
crack that is
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devnull
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response 4 of 65:
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Apr 30 07:00 UTC 1999 |
I really don't want to see a split to two systems, one of which doesn't
support email, either. I don't use mail on grex much, but occasionally
want to send mail from grex for whatever reason.
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scott
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response 5 of 65:
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Apr 30 10:57 UTC 1999 |
OK, so how would you deal with unending growth? That is the big social
question here.
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scg
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response 6 of 65:
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Apr 30 17:00 UTC 1999 |
One proposal thrown out at the board meeting would be to use shared
filesystems, so that one system would have just bbs and party, and the other
would have bbs and party, as well as everything else. That way, those who
just want to use bbs and party could do so on a system that wasn't bogged down
by the other users, while those who wanted to use Grex for all those other
things would still have access to the features of the conferencing only
system.
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pfv
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response 7 of 65:
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Apr 30 17:05 UTC 1999 |
Nope.
Yer looking at the following:
1) Increased Loading of an Increasingly limited system:
A) increased immigration;
B) increased software/interface requirements;
C) increased volumes of mail/file transfer;
D) decreasing "free" bandwidth;
2) Increasing costs of operation;
3) Increasing usage of a previously restricted medium;
4) Decreasing levels of user sophistication;
5) Social issues:
A) system (grex) society changing;
B) cultural "clashes"
i) grex-culture;
ii) national culture;
C) self-defense and Responsibility issues;
6) Issues related to the 501c3 situation.
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lilmo
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response 8 of 65:
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Apr 30 21:50 UTC 1999 |
Re resp:7 - "Nope" what?
#6 is a non-issue; we've always had a 501c3-type organization, we just have
the status officially, now. We won't pay taxes, and donations are
unquestionably tax-deductable. All that relates to Cyberspace Communications,
Inc, and only indirectly impinges on the computer system, Grex.
#2 isn't really much of an issue: computer hardware costs are dropping
precipitously, so that each higher level costs about the same as the last one
we got (staff, back me up or correct me on this point, please)
#1,3-5 are definitely things to think about, tho'
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