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response 125 of 127:
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May 7 23:57 UTC 1999 |
Re #120: I don't see what that has to do with anything. Grex is not
`most ISPs'; grex is something different and special.
In fact, grex has somewhere around ten phone lines *that actually get
used* for things other than ppp, so clearly there is some demand for
non-ppp use.
Now, one would suspect that at least 5% of those users have no
internet access other than grex, can't afford $60/year, and would find
some sort of additional outgoing access useful.
Re #121: Most of the people who want to run such bots don't live
within the local calling area on Ann Arbor, so I don't expect this
will be an issue.
Re #123: I tend to think that grex should try to offer the widest
variety of services it can with the resources it has. Sure, there is
some concern that grex may not have the resources to offer these
services, but we don't yet know for sure whether it does or doesn't.
I think we should give it a chance.
Even if we're giving people the techological ability to run bots, we
tell them they shouldn't be doing that. And if people around Ann
Arbor demonstrate that they are going to ignore that too consistenly,
then I suppose offering free outgoing access is a bad idea. But we
haven't yet demonstrated that that's the case.
Another idea that comes to mind: we could require that people under 18
who want free access involve their parents somehow. The group of
crackers that made life really painful for the FSF back in 1997 was
mostly around 15 and 16 year old people; I think that as people get
older, they become less interested in running bots.
Or we could just let teenagers get acccess, and if it becomes a
problem, we consider amending the policy with suitable parental
consent requirements.
Re #124: I hadn't been thinking there should be an explicit trial
period, but maybe that's reasonable. Perhaps having a trial period
that's based on the number of users (IE, for the first three months we
offer free authenticated access, we only offer it to the first 100
people to sign up; if there are no problems in that time period, then
we open it up to everyone, else we have a member vote on whether we
want to allow such access at all. Or maybe we just say that the staff
has discression to pick arbitrary numbers for how many people to allow
access for the first three months we're allowing free authenticated
access, so it can be 100 for the first month, and then 1000 the next
month (though I'll really be surprised if we hit 1000, but don't
really know what the numbers are), etc.)
If we have any trial provision, I would like it to be the case that
after the first three months, a member vote is required to make
anything happen other than giving anyone who wants it access (assuming
they're within the local calling area).
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