Grex Board Meeting, 2/7/10

Present: gelinas*, aruba, kentn*, keesan, jim, steve*, tsty*, unicorn 
[by phone]*, denise*
[* = board members; board member cross missing]

7:58 pm, meeting called to order.

-- Officer election results:
    Chair [president]: kentn
    Treasurer: tsty
    Secretary: denise

--Staff report:
    STeve summarized the hardware problems we had [he posted a summary 
in, I believe, item 4 in agora].  
     Backups were discussed, doing remote backups for now, then in a 
month or so, try doing a usb backup.
    Discussed adding members to staff. gelinas moved to add tsty and 
remmers to staff [with root access], denise seconded, motion passed.  
Staff would like to meet with tonster to get more info before adding him
 to staff.

--Next Meeting: Sunday, March 7, 6pm at Zingerman s

--Grex status and future:

    What is/should be our policy of disseminating info from taped 
meetings?  Should discuss in co-op. tsty moved and gelinas seconded: All
 grex meetings recorded for board members to use and to provide mp3
files  to be available if needed for other use/dissemination, subject to
board  approval. Motion passed.

   What has happened to the old grex equipment? Steve and mdw have most 
of it; keesan has recycled some of the old equipment.  Current Inventory
 includes:
   -I386 Box
   -external usb disk
   -spare motherboard
   -2 modems
   -gavel? [Slynne, do you still have this?]
   -speaker phone
   -treasurer s records
   -domain name

   The board has received email from srw [steve weiss] stating that veek
   
has been in touch to see about using srw s photos he has to use in a 
wikipedia article about grex. Does the board agree with this? There were
 no objections; go for it!

   
   Where to communicate when Grex is down?  Possibilities:
     -Posterous [sp?]
     -M-net: people can post info on mnet but mnet will not be the 
[only] place for staff to discuss info. 
     -twitter/facebook/myspace: looking into setting up accounts on one 
or more of these.
     -HVCN -doesn t work
     -Check google page

   Email question/item in coop posted by veek about the possibility of 
using postfix/
white listing. Will be discussed in veek s item as well as with staff.

   What about having personalized web domains? Will look into this, can 
also discuss online. What can we do without having to involve 
provide.net?

9:45 pm, gelinas moved to adjourn meeting, Steve seconded; motion 
carried.



    

66 responses total.

  
w0w .. fasssssssssst and good! tnx
  

Could someone please clarify the bit about opening up board meetings by 
both simulcasting and keeping those audio/video recordings available for 
folks to listen/watch at their convenience?  The coop discussion seemed to 
support doing this.  Yet the minutes are fuzzy as to what came down.  

What's up?

Could someone please clarify the staff issues?  My understanding was that
Remmers and TS do Not have root access.

Re #0: so SRW didn't forget :) Regarding the personalized web URL 
thing.. it could be done by creating a subdomain called 
xyz.cyberspace.org and delegating authority for the subdomain to a 
nameserver run on grex.cyberspace.org, so any further changes would be 
local BUT this would require that staff do the initial one-time 
delegation on Provide. 

BUT, I'm thinking that perhaps this could wait till later - the actual 
benefits being, rather marginal..

Anyway, so could we decide something for sure (even migrating to 
tonster's box is okay with me) regarding Mail, MySQL and Ping/
Traceroute/NMap (i'll open a thread on this). All are very useful for 
ppl using the shell.

  
one amplificatoin about he hardware inventory ... apparently the
board-at-the-time was wholly disinteresdsted in keeping arond (or
offering to return) anyhtiikg that was not activly in-use.
  
keesan said she recycled a lot of it ... mdw & steve captured some that
was going to head to teh shredder .. and some hit the shredder.
  
i think i have that right .. at least close.
  
re 3 ... dunno about remmers but i don;t ahve root at this second, but
it should be coming along some time soon. 
  
re 4 .. teh   xyz.cyberspace.org  was brought up sted *.org/~xyz for
persoanl sites and the board (between meeings) is considering how
to best effect the idea whilst -also- benefiting grex, i.e., some $$$.
  

I'm of the opinion that root access should be parceled out conserva-
tively on an as-needed basis.  In particular, since I don't know
exactly what I'll be doing as staff yet, I don't know if I need it.
Certain kinds of administrative tasks can be carried out without
root - for example, I didn't need it to run the recent board vote;
just needed privileged access to certain directories and files.
If I'm going to be authorized to go to Provide and hit reset,
I don't need root for that either.  On the other hand, if I'm
going to fight fires such as runaway processes and the like, then
I'd need root.

I think staff needs to get together, either in person or online,
and figure out who's going to do what.  Then I'll know if I
actually need root.

At the December board meeting, a staff meeting was scheduled
for early January.  It didn't happen because Grex was still down
with disk problems.  I think it's time to schedule another one.
If it's an in-person meeting, I'm out of town at the moment but
will be available from February 21 on.

I'm surprised the root password isn't sealed by the board in a
tamper-evident envelope with staff just given least privileges via sudo,
with a couple of staffers having root-level sudo.

It's more likely in a hermetically sealed mayonnaise jar under
Funk and Wagnalls' porch.

*snort*

resp:7: that's how ford used to keep their root passwords sealed.

It's also the recommended safe practice for financial institutions.

That doesn't sound like all that bad an idea, actually.  

The board approved root access for both tsty and remmers.  When either
will get that access is, I guess, up to the staff.

Most of the stuff is done by sudo now, I think.  Note that sudo just
makes more passwords lucrative targets.

There is still some disagreement on broadcasting the board meetings. 
Thus the limits on recording and disseminating the recordings.  We are
probably going to have to take membership-level action to get it
'right.'

resp:13 Sudo does *not* "just make(s) more passwords lucrative
targets." Sudo is a very, very useful tool and is the preferred
mechanism for doing things as the superuser these days.

I have given root access to both Remmers and TS via adding them to
the 'wheel' group.  Both should use sudo to access things as root.
I don't even know what the root password is, but it would probably
be a good idea if someone changed it to something that they know,
write it down, and store it somewhere securely.

I should state publicly that I have serious objections to adding
remmers to staff.  When I lobbied to get re-added to staff some
years ago, remmers objected strongly.  When I got re-added to staff
and elected to the board, remmers resigned from both.

I find that timeline suspicious and have found him difficult to
work with.  He created what I felt to be a very divisive forum to
discuss Grex being down during the recent outage, which fragmented
the discussion, *despite* being asked not to do so, by me, as a
baord and staff member.  In the past, he was not responsive to
email; I recall asking him multiple times to create me an account
on the machine that housed Grex's CVS server and he did not respond
until after I'd resigned from staff.  I feel like John is the type
of guy who likes to "take control."  I feel like he doesn't work
particularly well with others, and I'm concerned about him having
root access.

A lot of John's technical ideas are not well thought out and tend
to rely on things he's heard, rather than things that he's done.
He lobbied strongly to put in a complicated content-management
system on Grex, without having even used it.  I find that problematic,
and I'm worried that, with root access, John will do things that
are not easily supportable by the rest of us.  Similarly with his
ideas about virtualization.

I see his no-staff-stamp addition to staff as something of a coup
by the Grex old-guard.  I would have been happy to have him do
webmaster things, but full-on root access is an entirely other
matter.

you'd suppose Grex was an attractive female with all this plotting 
going on *grumble* anyway, umm..

1. Surprisingly, though I find the concept of old and new guards to be 
weird (what is their to guard even?), I kind of agree that Cross is 
right about Remmers appearing to be very sneaky <g> I have been 
pondering his sneakiness, myself, the last few days, and making 
speculative assumptions - mostly because, not sure if you remember 
but.. like the time ppl were grumbling about staff and asking for 
volunteers or some such thing, and I volunteered and then remmers 
volunteered and well.. *sigh* and after that all was forgotten.. 
anyway, the impression I got was that he volunteered simply to squelch 
me - I'm acutely aware that it's logically unsound but read on without 
flaming me and thou shall see, what it's to bee, to be mee.. :p

2. If Remmers is being a sneaky ol' coot, that's okay - the matter is 
irrelevant because.. at the end of the day, what counts is work done 
for Grex by staff and that is a very measurable quantity!

So.. *miaow* wouldn't it make sense for the board to give emm a task 
list, or Cross and Remmers to duke it out by doing stuff for us.. like 
E-Mail (which we don't have) or My-SQL stuff etc etc..

Basically, the whole sneaky Remmers AND old-guard thing, becomes a non-
issue see.. if a guy is laboring on your behalf, why bother with the 
color of the cat so long as it catches mice.

3. I mean, we should clearly demarcate tasks.. both are competent, both 
know Unix, BOTH have CONTRIBUTED in the past.. give emm whole projects 
and see who *does* what to determine the future. Would this work??

Re #15: mind you, I'm NOT saying Remmers IS sneaky and it's not my 
intention to even hint or cast doubt on his reputation! I don't know 
remmers at all! I've always found him polite and reasonably helpful.

What I am saying, is that: divining intent is a waste of time when you 
can use work done as a measure of competence. Not work done 10 years 
ago..

The reason I mentioned my own remmers thingy was because I meant to 
illustrate how my perception of some random guy on the net could 
influence my thought process. Not that Cross is mad or that Remmers is 
innocent.. we have simply no way of knowing for sure what their motives 
are.. so use measurable evidence.. in any case work gets done.

BTW, SRW got back :) all is well.. he's waiting for his Grex passwd to 
be reset so he can make changes.

See now.. that's another case to point.. I was a bit worried about that 
- thinking that he was being nasty and Oo! what a scum-bag! In fact, if 
ye had asked me for my opinion on SRW just 10 secs ago, I'd have slayed 
the man! In fact, and I hate to admit this, I was wondering if board 
had done some nasty evVil thing by telling me one thing and had snuck 
behind my back and told SRW to silently discard my request.. and I was 
in the process of listing all my sins and pondering which particular 
stunning discourse with Chad had been the last straw. Then the whole 
remmers thing, for a moment I contemplated a remmers sneakily calling 
SRW and telling him to you know.. put my request in the dustbin. *sigh*

It's all very embaressing and it's not meant to detract from what Cross 
is saying (because Cross is a different person and probably does not 
react the way I do).. my point is Resp 16: makes a lot of sense and 
avoids this complicated debate. Remmers can suggest something and work 
on his project - even if Cross thinks it's crap and Cross can do the 
same. It doesn't have to be perfect, or the most beauteous, or the most 
elegant piece of work (RT).. it's just a stupid shell with hardly any 
users.. so we should be able to do what we want and have a lot of fun. 

so long as Steve can reset the box<g>

Since the matter of 'staff stamp' has been raised:  The matter was
discussed in e-mail.  No formal vote was taken, but the discussion made
clear that the majority of staff were in favour of adding tsty and
remmers.  So the board acted.   

a) If it's the discussion I'm thinking of, the stipulation was that both
be added without root access.

b) It seems that the majority also wanted tonster added.

  
wel, i did wnat tonster added. and i will lobby for tonster in 
the futre.
  

I did, too.  Who wanted more in the way of an interview or whatever?

I do find it rather odd that there's some question and need for an
interview, like I'm asking for a job and grex is some top secret weapon
or something.  I've been around m-net and grex for 17 years, and I've
been a root/sysop for m-net for over 10.  I'm not some new person no one
knows.  

If you were an animal, what animal would you be?

"Why should we hire you?"

"Are you a people person?"

Maybe I'm just asking for too high a salary, but damnit I'm worth every
penny.

Can I see your manager?

Hahaha. That reminds me. How come we arent talking about LOST online
here any where?

because I haven't started watching this season and you don't want to
ruin it for me!

I'm a bit disappointed in the boards previous decisions vis-a-vis
staff.  It's the old-guard re-asserting themselves.  Oh well.

re #14 in what way was Remmers' Posterus forum for Grex divisive?  All 
it did was provide a place to have an open discussion.  Is Cross saying 
he does not want an open discussion.  Also Cross shouldn't be 
lambasting Remmers 'bad ideas' since the ideas he's had, at least the 
one to start validating new users, is killing Grex.  Was any discussion 
made at the board meeting about removing the validation patch from new 
user?  

I am concerned by Cross's statement that Remmers returning to staff is, 
in his opinion, "something of a coup by the Grex old-guard."  This 
makes it seem like he sees a power struggle going on.  What power 
struggle?  If Cross, or any of the other staff members, are seeing 
themselves as in 'control' around here and worry about 'coups' 
and 'losing control', that is not only paranoia but goes against grex's 
very principles.  I don't even know why Cross wants to continue on 
staff this year since he is deployed overseas.  Seems like it would 
hardly be a priority and if he is staying on staff under such 
circumstances, is it because he sees some power struggle and wants to 
prevent the return of the 'old guard' here?  

It was divisive, Richard, because most the traditional place for
such discussions has been M-Net.  John created a forum that he
controlled, where the creation of new 'items' had to be done,
basically, by him.  That's the antithesis of an open discussion,
Richard.  It also fragmented the discussion.  When that was pointed
out to John his response was, "Well, I think I'll leave things the
way they are."  Not exactly in the spirit of working with others,
is it?

John's retained sole control of Grex resources before (like the CVS
server).  And he's been asked several times to do things for Grex
in the last few years, but has always declined; why the change of
heart now?

But tell you what. Richard, why don't you just ask John what his
motivation is for joining staff?

And further, why does John get the green light when Tonster doesn't?

And as for user validation, well, how do YOU propose to counter
Chad and mickeyd crashing Grex all the time, Richard?  And how is
it killing Grex?  Perhaps you forgot when Grex was constantly down
because Chad and Mickey were crashing it all the time?

Tell you what Richard.  If you value open discussion so much, why are
you so eager to put someone who has a history of closing things up in a
position to do it again?

M-net might be the traditional place for reporting on grex being 
down.  It is in no way the traditional place for discussing 
"What should we do with Grex, in the vision thing?" because there
has been no other place.  Dan, your inability to see that the 
abusive outpouring from M-netters, and the refusal of substantial
portions of the Grex community to have anything to do with M-net, 
are simply astonishing to me.

resp:34 So Ken, after complaining about not having access to validate new
users, have many have you validated?  You throw a lot of stones, but live
in just as much of a glass house as anyone else.

I'm not opposed to a place that isn't M-Net, but I don't want it controlled
by a single person.

Dan #35: Cool, a totally unrelated ad hominiem attack!  Those are 
the best.  
 
Yup, in the interval between the time I volunteered to do user
validation, and the time I got set up to do it, all the motivation
dribbled away.  (Four months?  Six months?)
(Most of that was due to other social events on 
Grex having nothing to do with any participants in this discussion.)

resp:37 Ad hominem?  After you find my substantial inabilities astonishing?

If Grex is so horrible, Ken, why do you keep showing up?  And substantial
proportions of the Grex community refuse to have anything to do with M-Net?
How, exactly, do you define that?  I think that most grexers dual hat.

This response has been erased.

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