40 new of 92 responses total.
Oh and btw, I know my tone is not the greatest up there. I do appreciate people's suggestions and input. It does get frustrating sometimes though because *of course* it would be nice to have updates for our users and documentation and more staff than we can shake a stick at and loads of people willing to serve on the board and lots of paying members and everyone getting warm fuzzy feelings and a pony too while we are at it. Of course all of those things are things that would make Grex strong and healthy, but truthfully, I cant think of a way of really getting those things other than making Grex a full time job for me and others. Frankly, I dont want to commit that kind of time and energy to Grex. A few hours a month is about what I am willing to give. I would love it if there were others willing to give more. I would resign from the board in a heart beat if I thought for one moment that my being on the board was preventing someone who could do the job better from being on the board in my place.
I think that slynne is a pretty good board member, actually; at least she's willing to listen to suggestions. The thing is, after you reach a certain point, you need some sort of process to make things sane. Otherwise, it becomes a free-for-all; this sorta how it worked on the Sun, and it sorta worked because the OS had been EOL'ed, so it didn't matter what changes grex made to the basic system. As long as they backed it up and could get it back in the event of a crash, it was ok, since it wasn't like they had to worry about merging those changes into a future version of the operating system (since there wouldn't be one). Grex got into the, ``I'll change this; maybe tell people, maybe not...'' mentality. The situation now is different: the OS is supported and actively developed. It requires some maintenance. The staff environment is different. Unfortunately, no one is willing to stand up to staff and say, ``hey, people depend on this service. You need to be more transparant. You need to document what you do.'' They should. Because people *do* depend on this service. And if individual staff members don't like that, then they should be thanked for their time and released from their duties and obligations as a grex staff member. Is that too harsh? I don't think so. People will step up and volunteer and do the work; what does grex have to lose?
Regarding #53; Slynne slipped in. But I'm curious: why do you think it is that, in general, people aren't willing to devote more time to grex?
I dont think there is a simple answer to that question and I imagine that the answer is different for every individual. But, honestly, I have noticed that there is a lot of abuse online here that gets directed at all staff and board members. It is something I accept as being part of the territory but I think it is at least one factor in the equation. People generally do not like to put themselves into positions where they must deal with a lot of people telling them what they are doing wrong all the time. Maybe one thing we could all spend a little more time doing (myself included) is, in addition to pointing out what people are doing wrong, we could also point out what they are doing right. For whatever reason, people seem to have a more difficult time doing that than pointing out what people are doing wrong. I am certainly like that. I know one person who doesnt get nearly as much credit as he deserves. That is aruba. I dont think there would still be a grex if he wasnt willing to put as much effort into the place as he does. For that matter, *everyone* else who puts time into grex is making it a better place, even the people who do nothing more than participate in bbs and party. My fellow board members are all doing a pretty good job in my opinion, some more than others. John and Mary Remmers certainly put a lot of effort into this place. As a staff member, STeve puts in a lot of time behind the scenes. Cross, you were an asset to the staff before you resigned. I dont have a great base of UNIX knowledge upon which to form opinions of the staff but I know I have heard people who do know what they are talking about praise your abilities. The thing is that a lot of the criticism flung around here could be very constructive except that it seems to instead make people feel very defensive which isnt constructive at all. People here have really good ideas but often forget that the implementation of a good idea often involves a lot of hard work. I mean, just the whole co-location thing is a good example. It was an excellent idea in my opinion but moving out of the Pumpkin was several hours of work put in by a lot of people. Not everyone is willing or able to put in that kind of time and effort for a good idea or a positive change. Had there not been people willing to do that work, there would still probably be people sitting online here going on and on about what a good idea co-location was. People who would be wondering online why no one was listening to their VERY GOOD IDEA when the problem wasnt that people didnt think it was a good idea but, rather, that no one was willing to do the implementation.
On the opposite end of that spectrum, you have people who have the time, energy, and interest to do things to grex to make it a better place who get shot down because such and such a thing is so and so's baby, and we can't touch it for that reason. I know I feel like such a person sometimes. The way some people act around here, changing some of grex's software is tantamount to tearing down Westminster Abby to put up the world's biggest neon-lighted tube station, when in reality it's more like tearing down the old outhouse to put in a septic tank for indoor plumbing. Being told, ``No! We have to think this THROUGH FIRST!'' only to have the discussion die at that point gets old after a while. But no matter. It's gotten to the point where I think history should repeat itself and an, just as grex shot off from M-Net because M-Net was stagnating and stiffling, I think it's nearing time to spin off yet another system to replace grex.
And I think there's a lot of truth to that last sentence. It's interesting that I made TWO suggestions, yet the response from lynne only focused on my documentation suggestion (and if it's so obvious, why hasn't it been done? Or if it was tried, why did it fail? Any "lessons learned"?). I also recommended training new people and got no response whatsoever. However, instead of tossing off some fairly sharp, and well-aimed, criticism at the board, etc., let me simply say that if NEW volunteers are welcomed more, perhaps they could both learn another person's job AND at least begin the documentation process. It's all about NEW blood, pure and simple. Either grex gets it or it doesn't. Ball's in your court, folks.
re #45, 48 I made that identical suggestion almost a year ago (item 294 #86) Maybe they'll listen to you. But it seems to be that the old guard of grex has a way of doing things and they aren't about to change anytime soon.
I think we can all agree that the board as well as the volunteers are just waiting for STeve to die or something rather than addressing his behavior head-on. If I was wrong then the Board would've addressed the problem at the recent meeting rather than dance around like they didn't remember. If that's not the case then it must be that they don't care enough about staff beyond STeve.
re 57 It's almost worse than that. When some people start up discussions, some other people seem to find it necessary to tell them to shut up. I'm not going to name names here, but... If this is a system where we have to discuss to change something, and yet those very discussions are discouraged, we're not getting very far.
STeve, are you reading this item?
resp:57 Yes, it is clear that the old way where staff did everything by consensus isnt working anymore. That worked well when everyone knew each other personally and communicated in social situations. I dont know what the answer is now. The truth is that if you and some people whom you talk to frequently wanted to start a similar system, you probably could and it would probably be pretty nice. But what if you stayed and put that energy into running *this* system? It seems to me that for the effort and expense that would be put into a whole new system, the same effort could be put into running things here. Run for board. Join staff again. There are so few members here these days that the character of this place can easily be what anyone wants to make it. I got on the board last time with under 20 votes. resp:58 Why havent those things been tried? Because actually doing something takes a lot more effort than sitting on the sidelines coming up with great ideas. Both documentation and mentoring are good ideas and both things involve someone's time and labor.
And you've mentioned the NEW blood and encouraged them to be involved in grex. Historically speaking, they were involved in grex and left. IF the next round of new blood arrives, the only "time and labor" you need to find must come from the board and current staff members. It's really simple. Person X volunteers, SOMEONE on the staff and/or board needs to give them the tools to do the job. Reading between the lines, you seem to be saying the board or the current staff don't have the time or labor to give out reasonable assignments, or answer questions the newcomers need answered to complete the documentation. Again, grex needs to proactively plan how best to utilize NEW volunteers to accomplish the goals of redundancy and documentation. Welcome new blood or die.
Regarding #63; I was on staff. It seemed like a waste of time. But why? Let me tell you by asking a question. What, exactly, is someone supposed to DO on staff if everything they propose to do (or actually DO do) is undone by other staff members who feel entitled to dictate technical policy? Here's an example: a couple of years ago, I changed the symbolic link that points the ``bbs'' command to Picospan and pointed it to fronttalk. I think a total of two people noticed, since they have problems with their .cfonce files. Steve changed it back, and said in BBS not to make major changes to grex without getting approval, or something like that - the gist of it was that it had to be discussed and a concensus arrived at. (This was either in staff email or the staff conference; I don't recall which, but think it was the conference.) Basically, don't do it again. So much for initiative; my rationale was that we could have identified the major bugs and rough points rather quickly with a larger testing base and then fixed them, clearly the way to get rid of picospan. Oh well. As another example, consider my recent changes to move to the standard password hashing algorithm: I've got the code written; it seems to work (I've tested it on a throw-away test system at home). But, EVEN IF I WERE ON STAFF, putting it into the system would be like pulling teeth. Why? Because the old hash algorithm was somebody's baby (never mind that that somebody logs into grex irregularly at best - like, once a year or so). It's the same thing with replacing newuser, or replacing PicoSpan (which has definite identifiable bugs that we can't fix because we don't have the source code). Then there's grexsoft: I put effort into re-writing a bunch of grex's home-grown utilities when I was on staff. I think some of them were much improved (a lot of bugs were fixed). However, no one reinstalled them after the last system upgrade, despite my repeated requests, instructions how, and offers for assistance. It certainly takes away the motivation for helping out. Yeah, we *could*, as a community, put energy into fixing fronttalk to the point where it was a viable alternative to picospan for everyone who uses BBS regularly (I've used it as my standard BBS program for years; I know of only one major bug that's probably a one-line fix). But again, it's somebody's baby, and even if we did that, there would be strong oposition from the old guard to ditching the ancient program that is holding the system back. What's the point of doing the work if it's just going to be ignored in the collective dust bin of grex's bit bucket? These aren't examples of sitting on the sidelines sniping, they're actually doing things. But if none of it ever gets put into production, what's the point? If every not-even-major system change has to be funneled through Steve et al, and they just doesn't want to change things, then what is bringing in new staff members going to do, other than put more spin cycles on the CPU with people who sit around cleaning up after disk hogs or zapping spam accounts, and never doing anything FUN or INTERESTING? If we want janitors to take the load of Steve so he can do all the interesting work, then just say that. But if not, then more needs to change than just adding a few people to a couple of Unix groups and mailing lists. And I asked for opinions about me rejoining staff to work on grexsoft and other basic system stuff; largely with the aim of making grex more ``standard.'' So far, I haven't heard much back about it (I'm certainly not going to get on my knees and beg). Slynne, I think you might have been one of the few people to even acknowledge it.
Yes, cross. Everything you have said there is a pretty major problem. We do need to encourage staff initiative. I dont know what else to say but I'll try to remember to bring it up at the next board meeting. FWIW, I would love it if you were on staff again.
Cross brings up a good point related to my documentation suggestion. I'm not a techie, but if I understand the situation correctly, the more closely grex can be brought to commonly accepted and understood standards, the less a problem documentation becomes, because we don't have as much "customized" work to track. Correct me if I'm wrong on this.
That is correct.
I have enough experience working with highly customized systems at my job to know that there is a lot of value in moving closer to what is standard.
does/did the well have a transition trauma?
Re #58: The CVS-based documentation mechanism was set up by Jan Wolter, as Dan mentioned in #47. It's called "grexdoc" and is publicly accessible. See the directory /a/r/e/remmers/grexdoc for a current copy. In it you'll find instructions for downloading and installing the operating system, installing our various specialized applications such as party and backtalk, and many other things. It's really quite complete, and the installation of major subsystems is automated via scripts. Using grexedoc, I was able to bring up a "test" version of Grex on one of my own machines as part of our OS upgrade, modifying the documentation as needed to be consistent with OpenBSD 3.8, before the upgrade was applied to the "real" Grex. Grexdoc is a very useful tool. If there's been a problem with it, it's that not all staff members have been equally diligent in updating the CVS when they tweak the system, causing the documentation to be out of sync with reality here and there. While this is not ideal, it's also a human failing that's hardly unique to Grex, as Lynne pointed out earlier. But it's not fatal either -- it means that before doing the next OS upgrade, we'll have to take care of any loose ends and make sure that grexdoc is up to date.
Regarding #70; To/From what/what? Regarding #71; Yes, it is useful. But it could be cheaply made more useful.
Great, so my suggestion is far more doable than lynne was suggesting. Now get on the personnel redundancy issue.
I never said it wasnt doable. I just pointed out that sitting on the sidelines suggesting the obvious while ordering others to do the work is a lot easier than actually doing the work.
re 65 And now Fronttalk is basically in the same situation as Picospan, except with more bugs. The real question is whether janc would've put more work into it if he noticed that it was GreX's primary BBS software, or if we would've wound up using an almost unsupported program with more bugs and fewer options.
The thing about fronttalk that is qualitatively different than Picospan, however, is that we (a) have the source code to fronttalk, and (b) have a license that allows us to modify it.
Re #74: And where did I ever say you thought it wasn't doable? Your exact words were "pain in the neck." And your "sideline" comment was a small aside in the discussion, so let's not try to rewrite history. The fact is there ARE volunteers who are not on the sidelines, and the board has no policy to maximize their value to grex. Try focusing on what you can do as a board member, rather then responding with characterizations of those who are not on the board or staff as doing less.
Regarding #74; But even the problem who volunteer the work don't get the opportunity!
resp:77 Indeed. It is much easier to sit on the sidelines with "brilliant" ideas complaining that others arent doing the work to implement them. And that work *is* a pain in the neck sometimes. That doesnt mean it isnt doable. It does make the work somewhat less likely to get done. resp:78 I think that comes down to something the board certainly should talk about. In the past, staff decisions (as far as I know) were reached by some consensus. That worked well when the staff communicated with each other better. But now, as far as I can tell, that doesnt seem to be happening. So I think we probably should discuss how decisions about technical issues are made.
Re #79: Thanks for recognizing the brilliance of my ideas, though your tone could use some work. And this "sitting on the sidelines" obsession of yours is doing nothing to address the redundancy problems. You already have (or recently had) volunteers who could, at least with some training, have filled those roles. And then there's folks like me, who have no useful skills that would benefit grex. Giving me root would ensure its quick destruction. And yet you keep coming back with the "sidelines" zingers while ignoring the very assets you should be utilizing. That's quite a neat illustration of how dysfunctional grex has become.
Really? Are you volunteering? Because if you are, that changes things. What would you like to do? Perhaps you would be willing to coordinate a project like organizing our documentation or setting up a mentoring program?
Who would volunteer for GreX right now, in light of recent events?
I would volunteer to work on some pet projects.
Re #81: Once again you (deliberately?) ignore my point. Cross would be a volunteer AND has the skills I lack. Lacking those skills, the best I can come up with is: Have staff describe the specific aspects of their grex work and then prioritize them in order of importance. Next, find a volunteer who is willing to learn at least the high-priority items. Set up a meeting for the volunteer to meet the staff and set up a training timetable. The board should then monitor the process. And rather than commend me on the brilliance of this idea, perhaps you could simply raise it at the next board meeting. Finally, since it appears the board has not, to date, come up with a plan similar to mine, from now on you can no longer complain I have done nothing for grex.
resp:83 Cross, that is great! What do you want to do and what do you need to do it? I cant promise anything to you other than to bring it up with the board but you'll need board approval if you need root anyways. resp:84 Ok then. It would be a big help to have the staff describe the specific aspects of their grex work and determine which work is high priority. It would be an even bigger help to find a volunteer who is willing to learn at least the high-priority items. Setting up the meeting and the training timetable is a nice touch too. If you are willing to do that stuff, I would LOVE it. It would be good for Grex and I am most willing to ask the board to authorize you to do it.
(He wants to change the password-hashing algorithm, at least as a start, Lynne. ;)
Joe's right, I do want to change that. I'm pretty disappointed that discussion about it has stopped in garage (and I would assume the staff conference and mailing list, too). But I also want to update grexsrc and work on getting a local grexdoc that's mirrorable to remote systems via some standard protocol (cvsup, cvsync, etc). Ultimately, a merge of grexdoc and grexsoft would be nice. Getting an updated newuser running would be nice; I found - and fixed - lots of bugs in my private version derived from the sources running on grex. Removing unused code and support for absolutely ancient operating systems (4.2BSD [ca. 1983], Ultrix, AIX version 3, NeXTstep) and just focusing on POSIX+a simple system dependent library as a target environment reduced line counts by a third; I figure I can strip out another 1,000 or so lines by simplifying and correcting some of the logic. There's at least one faily major security hole lurking in newuser which, only due to a misconfiguration, isn't exploitable on grex at the moment. I think working towards a viable replacement for Picospan is a worthy goal. Like Cyklone, I think process is important and it would be well to impose some on grex. Yes, root access would be required for a lot of this.
3DES..then the hard stuff
resp:87 Ok, I'll admit that I dont understand most of that. But, I will print it out and will bring it up at the next board meeting where I am sure at least some of my fellow board members will know what it means. I will let you know the outcome of that discussion shortly after the meeting which is in just under two weeks.
"I'll admit that I dont understand most of that." Now you now how I feel ;) I'm glad you're bringing it up for discussion. IMNSHO, that's exactly the kind of thing the board should be looking at. Thanks.
re 88 not alcohol, silly !
Regarding #89; Okay, Thanks.
You have several choices: