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Grex Board Meeting, Thursday, March 16, 2017, 7:30 p.m. 
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We had trouble getting everyone connected on Hangouts, so some Board
members communicated via telephone.

Call to order at 7:53 p.m.  Members In attendance were Dan, Chuck,
Todd, and Kent.  We have a quorum so can conduct business.

First item of business was to approve the previous minutes.  They were
approved unanimously.

Second item of business was to set the next meeting time.  It was
unanimously agreed to hold the next Cyberspace Board meeting on June 8,
2017, a Thursday, at 7:30 p.m. EDT.

Main Business:

  1. Elections: we need to confirm when current Board members terms
     end. However, we'd like to have an election in 2017 to fill the
     open seat as well as any expiring or expired seats.

  2. Treasurer business:  Todd is working on filing 4 years of State
     of Michigan corporate updates.  We also agreed that we need a new
     registered agent, who must reside in Michigan.  Kent will fulfill
     this role and Todd will do the paperwork.

     The Board discussed the PO Box.  We believe this to be expired
     now and no longer accessible to Cyberspace, Inc.  We will remove
     references to it from our web site.  If checks need to be sent,
     Todd said he could set up a PO Box near where he lives to receive
     them.  Otherwise, users need to use PayPal.  The Board showed
     no interest in maintaining the Ann Arbor, MI PO Box.

     The Board discussed tracking memberships and their expirations.
     The Board agreed that whatever Todd can do as treasurer to keep a
     good list of payments for memberships will be acceptable.  Most (if
     not all) of our memberships are coming in via PayPal currently.
     Thus, PayPal records can be used to determine recent payments.

Treasurer's Report:
     In the past month we've received 3 memberships.  2 were for $18.
     One was for $36 (2 years).  

     The PayPal balance is $1844.52.  We have enough money to meet
     current expenses of running the corporation.  We also have money
     in TCF Bank.

     The Annual Reports to the State of Michigan cost $25 each, so
     this will be a $100 total expense.

     (Todd got disconnected at this point)

Staff Report:
     Staff discussed moving to a new system.  One of the main obstacles,
     other than free time, is the difference between how OpenBSD
     handles our web-based BBS and RT help desk and how FreeBSD would
     handle them.  FreeBSD uses the PAM system for passwords, so that
     requires either building PAM functionality into applications,
     such as the web server, or try to do what we've been using on the
     current system.  That is, use a library developed by Jan Wolter
     to allow web-based BBS users to access the shadow password file.
     We do not want to run the web server as root.

     Potentially we could run Apache on the new system and port this
     authentication library to work with it and continue to offer
     web-based BBS.  If instead we switch to the nginx web server,
     we would probably need to drop web-based BBS support as well as
     RT help desk support unless some authentication module could be
     developed to allow access.

     This led to a discussion of the RT help desk.  There are three
     issues with getting it working in a new system.  First, it has been
     a long time since anyone on staff has set it up, so on a new system
     it would be like starting over from scratch.  A second issue is
     spam, which we receive by the bucketful on the RT system.  It is an
     on-going maintenance task to update the procmail recipes to keep
     most of it out.  Finally, there is the authentication issue noted
     above.  Potentially we could let RT have its own password database
     just for the people who need to have access.

     We agreed that there just are not that many staff members using
     RT currently (just 2) so we don't really need it for its ability
     to allow multiple people to respond to issues.  There was some
     discussion of moving help desk facilities off of Grex to some
     remote server.  What that would look like, no one was sure, but it
     would mean our data would be elsewhere.  The advantage of having
     the help desk software on Grex is that we control our data.

     We noted help desk software as something we would investigate to
     see what is available for both on Grex (to replace RT) or remote
     access (such as GitHub).

     The discussion of spam in RT generated further discussion of
     how e-mail works on Grex currently.  That is, we are constantly
     fighting spam with few staff resources.  One option is to turn off
     incoming e-mail.  Another option is to turn off e-mail entirely.
     This is not desirable because at least staff need to use Grex
     email to send out payment notices, password resets, and other
     information. We need incoming e-mail to get help desk requests,
     unless that e-mail goes to a help desk system outside Grex.

     We want to be sensitive to the concerns of the host of the
     virtual machine that is running on Grex currently. We don't want
     to overload his system with spam.  An option may be to move
     administrative e-mail off of Grex and to a separate server.  Other
     user e-mail access in this scenario would be shut off.

     It was noted we need a viable e-mail architecture to continue to
     provide incoming and outgoing e-mail on Grex.  And we need a viable
     web architecture for our web site and help desk to continue to
     function as they do now.

9:16 p.m. Motion to adjourn was made and seconded.  Vote was unanimous
to adjourn.

2 responses total.

Just testing to see if I can reply from the web.

Yep. That worked. I don't know if the Area would be a "Hot Seller. Ok let's move on to see what does work around here.

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