Now that Grex is back up with an IDE drive, which will hopefully solve the problem of it crashing frequently, it seems to be that the most critical area of concern is finding a new ISP. At the board meeting, Steve said that Grex's current ISP, provide.net, is likely to go under within a few months. Without an ISP, there is no Grex. It is my understanding that Tony Publiski, who goes by the username tonster, has generously offered to host Grex in his basement, on an indefinite and free-of-charge basis. He has also offered to take on staff duties. Can the board and staff use this item to discuss the issue, or at least keep the userbase up-to-date on their plans? I understand that the time of Grex's volunteers is the scarcest resource it has at the moment. However, finding a new host is literally vital to the future of Grex. Therefore, I hope that the people in charge are able to keep the userbase informed.60 responses total.
If staff does want to take me up on my offer, feel free to ask me for details or whatnot. I can also bring up a VM anytime to test installs and such if that's desirable.
fine offer tonster ... w/o doubt this wiell be discussed at the next satff meeting .. whihd was supposed to bae a couile days ago .. (ahem). in fact, satgff emetings are open ... you omight wanna sign up on posteorus to stay tuned in. ... in additoin to grex.
Er, just to be clear, staff meetings have never been open. Those and the staff conference are the only exceptions to our open tradition. The idea was staff needed to have a place to discuss security concerns. Now, not saying that can't be changed, but keeping those two areas staff only has worked in the past.
it's similar on m-net, and it's a good thing. if there's interest in my offer or in me being on staff, let me know.
i may be wwroing but the -conference- is strictly closed but the ftf meetings were nominally open or closed depending on hte circumstance ...
Nope; staff meetings were (and are) invitation-only.
They shouldn't be though. Why shouldn't any user who is interested in grex and wants to partake of the discussion be allowed to attend a staff meeting if they want? I think that staff meetings should be announced as taking place and anyone who wishes to attend need only rsvp staff to be told the time and location.
As mentioned in regards to the Board meetings, staff meetings usually include discussion of security matters and similar things.
You really have to routinely discuss "security matters" in private? What "similar things" are so confidential? That seems overly cautious.
Only non-profit board need to be open to the public (except for certain closed sessions). Committees (like "staff") are much less constrained. They usually just conduct their business within themselves, though often open enough to encourage member participation, as appropriate.
Staff should realize that such a lack of openness is easily mistaken for absence and members who see the system go down for an amount of time with nobody explaining why or how are not going to continue lending support.
Quite right. Committees should also report on their activities at least at every board meeting and the reports should be available to the members (apart from necessarily confidential information).
The staff used to report at every board meeting. I doubt that has changed. Think of it like this. I own some (now rather worthless) bank stock. I am invited to be at the yearly shareholders meeting and to vote for members of the board of directors. But it would be rediculous of me to insist I be allowed into the IT department's planning session for deploying a new generation of ATMs. I also vote for my legislators, but I am shocked to find that I am not allowed to sit in on the meetings of the oversight commitee for the Central Intelligence Agency even though my senator is a member of that commitee. Prospective members of staff do get invited to staff meetings so I wouldn't say they are exactly closed, but they are the next best thing to it. And that is as it should be.
umm.. after Enron and Fannie May, I'm sure it's a good idea to sit on the IT department's planning session, so to speak. A lot of people have been calling for more transparency in the way companies and governments are governed. The real question to ask should be: how transparent can you get without sacrificing profitability in the long run (include cost to society - global-warming, etc). A lot would depend on the nature of the business and what needs to be protected. You might not want the latest Stealth-bomber schematics to be part of the public domain, but a lot of routine work could be made public at great cost savings to the tax payer. In Grex's case, it's a non-profit, so barring security/privacy concerns (accidentally airing the root password in public) there should be no reason not to permit a open staff conference. It certainly is doable since security through obscurity is a bad idea anyway. It's not like we are an ad agency that needs to guard against theft of creative effort. Mind you, in a truly advanced and enlightened society, you probably won't need to bother about guarding against theft of your latest Stealth-bomber and even that would be public-domain.
It just seems bizarre to me that staff insists on maintaining the privacy of their work when it really is to their detriment to operate like that. I don't think member support of staff is very high right now, but that might be different if they saw the effort being made.
Re #16: In order of importance: 1. No functional board 2. Not enough users 3. More money, more volunteers, more users, more users I really don't see current staff as being much of a problem right now. Steve might have taken a month? to get Grex back, but he did get Grex back for the New Year; so what have we/board accomplished in the last 13 days? Right now, what Grex REALLY needs is a functioning board! Then lets get some policy for handling volunteers - some efficient mechanism for handling new users, updating the web-site, contributing code, setting up an Internet presence (YouTube, FaceBook, MySpace, Wiki, Flickr), more features (MySQL access, virtualHost: veek.cyberspace.org, bigger disk quotas). The whole problem as I see it is that suggestions just seem to dissipate once it reaches the board.. perhaps I'm mistaken, which is why that video thing would be really useful! Right now, all I see is Steve patching the box and heaving and hoing.. but a lot of policy type stuff seems to be missing.. eg: the web-site could do with some minor fixes; I need input for the Grex wiki page (http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/User:Vivek.m1234/Myyyyyyyyyyyy_Cyberspace_Stuff) I don't know how to handle the Grex logo thing TownHall.png - copyright+wiki??; etc Most of this stuff requires board input??
Comparing grex staff to a bank's IT department is rather ridiculous, but some of what you say is certainly true. I doubt there's really that much that's truly private or poses a risk if seen publicly involved in the discussion.
re #14 I also vote for my legislators, but I am shocked to find that I am not allowed to sit in on the meetings of the oversight commitee for the Central Intelligence Agency even though my senator is a member of that commitee. What about the GAO and congressional constituents? They listen to popular opinion frequently. Why wouldn't Grex want to spend funds according to the membership?
I see no reason not to open up the staff meetings. Then again, I've never been invited to a staff meeting. I'm not sure they're particularly useful. Also, for the last few years, the staff conference has been almost dead. Before that, it was more of a gossip session than anything else. I would go so far as to suggest restarting it and opening it up read-only (unless you are on staff) so that people have visibility into what staff does. It would embarass folks to open up older generations of the conference, but opening it up going forward would be good. The security concern is not relevant; security issues haven't been discussed there in years. If they need to be, that's what email could be used for (perhaps with a copy kept in a file on grex).
if the timing is right, you can particoipate as you did, by phn, with the board meetigs.
I think the timing should be made right so that I can participate.
re #20 how would it embarass folks if older versions of the staff conference were opened as read-only? Was the staff conference being used as a place to trade hurtful and malicious gossip about other users and say things about them that you wouldn't say if they could read it?
In my opinion, yes and yes.
re #23 I think you've pretty much found the hot button. Sure, there might be that 1 out of 20 security discussion but I'm betting the true fear is that there was too much unprofessional bashing taking place.
Yup.
Open the archives!!
re 22 ... and i agree totally. how many hours different are you from est? btw, sned me an email with a phn number so i ca test out magicjack here, from home, befoe we try a board meeting.
see this item is a perfect example of what is wrong with grex. Read the title, " Where is Grex moving to when provide.net closes in a few months?" and then find any of the twenty eight responses that actually discusses that. I think it is becoming clear that Grex's board and staff have become entirely reluctant to make any real decisions. Probably out of pure complacency and disinterest. Clearly the downtime grex has had due to the box being at a co-lo where nobody has the time to go over to it shows that things need to change. How many times does Grex have to be down days at a time simply because nobody has the time to go over to provide.net and reset it? Grex's board needs to get off their asses and accept Tonster's very generous offer. If the inclination of Grex's board members is to not do anything and make no decisions, why are they serving in that capacity? To put it on their resumes?
I think we could move forward here without beating up our volunteers. Really I do.
I think that the beating up of the volunteers just makes things run even slower
re #30,31 I disagree. I think the fact that the board members are volunteers should in no way insulate them from user/member criticism. If you agreed to serve that is a contract between you and those that elected you, and you therefore have to accept whatever heat comes from doing or not doing the job, regardless of whether you are being paid for it. I have served in volunteer positions, on campaigns and other such, and I have never thought that the fact that I was 'volunteering' gave me a free pass to be less responsible than those who were doing paid positions.
I think having Tony on staff is a great idea. I'm less enamored of the idea of having Tony as Grex's landlord. Grex has always tried to stay in commercial space because there were some issues in Olde M-net Days about having the system in someone else's home. Having a private individual host Grex in his or her home works great -- until it doesn't. When it breaks, it breaks spectacularly. Possible bad things: 1) Law enforcement could decide to seize Grex. Since it wouldn't be clear to them which computers were Grex and which were Tony's, they would find it easier to take everything. 2) Access by other staff for hardware issues might conflict with family needs of the host: say there's a sick kid or something. 3) The host and the rest of the Grex community could sour on each other. (This is not meant as a dig at Tony, it could happen with anyone.) 4) Not to be too morbid, but something could happen to the host -- unemployment, incapacitating illness, stuff like that.
Worst case - off-site backups installed on new hardware or hosting. I think we could worry so much about all that could go wrong that we'd simply die from paralysis.
resp:32 Do you think that being very critical of volunteers makes other people more likely or less likely to volunteer? If Grex had hundreds of people who wanted to volunteer and only a very few volunteer slots, there would be room for a lot of criticism. That isnt the case here. And it is especially galling when the people who do the most complaining are not people willing to do any work themselves. It is one thing to helpfully point out things that need to be done and perhaps even suggest possible solutions. It is quite another to demand someone else's unpaid time. It really bothered me when I was on the board that no matter how much effort I put into things, there was always someone bitching that not enough was being done and it was usually someone who couldn't be bothered to do anything themselves.
Note that in my scenario there should be no need for anyone to touch the hardware grex is hosted on, any more than if grex were hosted as a virtual machine at a commercial company would it have physical hardware. Unlike now, however, I could provide access to the machine it is hosted on so that grex staff (all grex staff, or whoever staff appointed to have access, and I would not be the sole person to give that access) would be able to access the machine remotely as if they were sitting right in front of it. Power on the machine, power it off, get on console, reboot, whatever. I do understand the hesitation due to m-net's beginnings, though I have no intentions of doing anything like that. As mary said, though, theres always the option of offsite backups. Staff can also take snapshots of the VM and probably copy those offsite occasionally. I've never actually done that, but I'm certain it's possible. As far as being critical of board and staff, I have to say that it's coming to a point that something more harsh needed to be said. The conversation has sat stagnant for the past 3+ months. Offers and suggestions have been made since grex was down late last year with little or no mention by most of the board and staff. At some point the clock is going to wind down on provide.net's service and they're going to call someone and say 'hey, we've been telling you for months that our service is shutting down. You need to be out by Friday.' and noone is going to know what to do because noone will discuss it.
FWIW, it is very different when criticism comes from someone who is obviously willing to do things. It is also fine to point out things which need to be done which is a much different thing from demanding that someone else do those things. The real problem with Grex is a leadership void though and nagging isnt going to solve that problem unfortunately. It has been my experience that harsh criticisms can sometimes get people to do things in the short term but in the long run, those harsh criticisms result in things like a board of directors who dont log on, dont participate in online discussions, don't attend board meetings and so on. It sucks but that is how I see it. Maybe it is too late for Grex. Maybe there really is no one willing to step up enough to save it. (if I cared enough, which I don't, I would make sure that board meetings happened by organizing them and calling board members to remind them to show up. Then I would insist that Grex be moved to Tony's house and I would do everything I could do to facilitate that. That might include calling staff people and encouraging them to participate by doing things to make it fun for them.)
I should also make clear that i'm not encouraging berating volunteers. I've been volunteering for m-net long enough to know that what slynne says is correct, too much of it happens. however, after months of getting no response at some point you've got to get more firm. Whether it's to my server or finding another solution, the problem isn't going away, time is running out, and a decision must be made.
I think when/if Tonster takes the box, that should also be the time that Grex formally stops offering email. There is really no reason for Grex to be offering email these days, there are only eighteen zillions places where you can get free email from places that can provide better services than Grex. There was a time years ago when Grex offering free email was a valuable service. Not anymore. Besides I think that without the email, it might discourage trolls from bothering to come here.
I agree that it is probably time for Grex to stop offering email
alternatively, it could be offered in the same way it's now offered on m-net.
^^^^^^ Yeah, that!
but why offer it at all with grex's limited resources when there are so many other places that offer better free email? I think offering censored email is contrary to grex's mission of being fully open anyway. Censoring/whitelisting email and validating new user are really getting away from grex's mission of being open access.
Is there any more news about Provide.net and where they stand? Are they really closing imminently?
thisitem begins with an unsubsatntiated calim that proviede.net is closing. anyone haev a real fact from provbide? or is thns just scholar messing his fingerttips dipping in prejudiced pixels? i thoght not.
resp:43: I agree that censoring/whitelisting email is not the best way to do things. I don't really like veek's plan, but that's not to say it can't work. It's just not the way I'd do things. The method I'd suggest, and the way that m-net does it, uses 0 of m-net's (or grex's) resources but still allows people to maintain their email address. You can either use the web-based email account (I've just posted instructions and opened ports so that this works with pine on m-net now, I'm sure you could use other text-based clients similarly as well) or just login after creating the account and forward the email to the address of your choice. resp:44: I certainly haven't validated the claim that provide is closing, but I don't think it should come as any surprise. They're a small town ISP in a dying industry. They were big dial-up guys and few people in this area continue to use dial-up. They're probably only surviving because of the colo these days.
They sell dsl service too
Traditional DSL is really a dying industry too. It was a nice service when Northpoint and Covad were selling the SDSL service, but the future lies in FiOS and Uverse, which isn't resold by external providers. Unless provide is going to redefine themselves a colocation facility, I don't think they're going to survive. It's a shame really. I liked the small providers.
i;m glsad noonwe other than this item's instigator makes the claim that provide is going bellyup. (alsong with some sympatico dolts who also would wish grex dead and crap on the staff.cf)
Well, STeve did raise the possibility at the December board meeting. It's not just "this item's instigator" and "sympatico dolts". Regardless of whether our current provider is in imminent danger of folding or not, I think it behooves Grex to have a plan for moving if the need arises.
re #33 LOL! Yes, Tony is a magnet for cop raids
Re. 49: No, I'm not the only one who's saying that provide.net is closing. I'm repeating what Steve said at a board meeting which you attended.
I don't think it matters one bit whether provide.net is closing. The fact is that provide.net has ceased to be a viable hosting solution. Grex goes down and stays down because nobody authorized can get over there to reboot the box. In addition nobody is thinking about *why* Grex needs to be re-set this often? Are they taking the power up and down over there? I think it is clearly time for the grex box to be moved to a staff member's house.
I think its time to recode Grex as a hosted Moogle solution.
steve said that provide was cutting back - he didn;t say it was closing. richard: "fact is that provide.net has ceased to be a viable hosting solution." ??? and yo know this, as a 'fact', because? thnking head is a decent idea though.
No, Steve said that Grex would have to be off of provide.net.
resp:55: I don't think it's difficult to find that that is a fact. The place has limited hours, which makes it sometimes difficult for people who are on the magic list to get in and do maintenance on the box, and there are a limited number of people who can get access. Additionally, should those people all be busy (and this has happened even in the past few months, and certainly in the past few years!), it's not possible to add someone to the list quickly to get the box back up. I think the recent downtime over the past several months is enough 'facts' to establish that provide is clearly not the best solution, though it beats shutting grex down.
actually, changing the list can be done by anyone -on- hte list except that i got hte list changed to include me and remmers before i was on teh list. it could have been done earlier & faster a few months ago but i didn;t wnat to stomp on toes. if there is a panic hands-on-rqueired situation it;s true that we aer subject to proide's opne-hours. but less so than we were in ken's wharehouse since provide is open weekends. having a site like lmaster's basemsnt or the access of the pumpkin isn't, imo, all that critical altohogh it was nice. bsesides, there are more of us to assist now. awareness can./could go back to seleep again but that;s remote for the near fture, imo.
What are the backup plans for the unlikely event that our host takes an out-of-town trip, or (heaven forbid) is hospitalized or something like that? (carpcarpcarp)
It wouldn't be difficult to mirror some of Grex's facilities - e.g. bbs and the website - such that if Grex's "main machine" became unavailable, access could be switched over to the mirror. Grex's storage and computing requirements are so modest that I think that mirroring "in the cloud" is a pretty inexpensive proposition. Just mirroring the data is trivially easy. As an experiment, I used rsync to copy all of the Agora conferences (dating back to 1991) to a FreeBSD virtual machine at my disposal. Creating the initial mirror took 36 minutes of elapsed time - about 380 mb of data. The mirror can be kept in sync by running rsync as a cronjob at frequent intervals. Since rsync copies only the changes since the last run, resource usage for keeping the mirror synchronized would be quite low. Now, if you have backtalk running on the mirror and also keep users' participation files sync'd, people could participate in bbs on the mirror if the main machine was unavailable. Turning that into a production system would take a bit of thought but shouldn't be too difficult. But anyway, I think it would behoove Grex to implement some redundancy so that it doesn't rely on the availability of just one machine. It wouldn't be expensive to do this.
You have several choices: