response 1 of 73:

Jul 29 21:52 UTC 1999

to clarify, the bylaws do not give the board the authority to shut down
grex even a time-sensitive situation-- only the membership as a whole
can vote to dissolve or discontinue grex, even temporarily.

response 3 of 73:

Jul 29 22:57 UTC 1999

   Now, now... Richard has every right to ask things like this, as does
anyone on the planet who uses Grex, by they from Dexter or VietNam--or
even Mars.

   The parts 1..3 that write of in #0 are correct but they aren't the
whole story.  Along with those more routine things is guideance.  The
function of the board, really, is to steer the system along the nearly
uncharted waters of running a system on an unbelievably small amount
of money (less than 30 cents a year per year), and to keep it in good
shape.  Presumably this also means to run a legal system.

   Thus I think that preparing for disaster scenerios under extraordinary
situations makes a lot of sense.  This was one of those times, and the
first that I know of that has involved Grex so directly.

   If there are those who feel that we the board overstepped our authority
I would like to hear it, and hear of other possible ways that we might
deal with situations like this, should they arrise in the future.

response 5 of 73:

Jul 29 23:28 UTC 1999

   I think that perhaps by now you know that I am not in favour of
complex rule structures, Richard.

   If you are going to go down the road of 'what do the bylaws
*specifically* say about ...' I'm afraid you're going to wander 
into some barren territory.  The bylaws presume that the board
members (and members in general) posess the intelligence of a
soapdish, and thus do not need all possibilities spelled out for
them.

response 7 of 73:

Jul 29 23:58 UTC 1999

I dont think there need to be specific provisions for everything-- but
the need or desire to shut down grex and cease operations is so major
an issue that the board shouldnt act on such unless they are given
that authority.

the bylaws dont say that the board members cant vote to take an axe
and smash up grex's hardware either, but would they assume the right
to do that without member approval?

I think its dangerous to have bylaws that are *so* vague that the board
can assume virtually any authority...there have to be certain issues
that are *so* important that only the membership can or should decide.
this is one of those issues.

response 9 of 73:

Jul 30 01:11 UTC 1999

What's being said, I think, richard, is that it's assumed the board members
are reasonable people, and so the bylaws aren't written on an especally
specific level. So far that seems a safe assumption.  Besides, it would seem
to me that control over the day to day operations of the system includes, by
necessity, the ability to shut it down temporarily from time to time.  This
*was* going to be a temporary shutdown; we don't require a member vote to
replace a disk, I don't think this is all that different.

I've personally been to hour long meetings (of other groups) where over half
of a two hour meeting was speed debating points of the bylaws and procedure. 
It sucks.  You can't get anything done that way.

response 11 of 73:

Jul 30 03:13 UTC 1999

Um, the board only voted for a TEMPORARY shutdown.  That's clearly
within it's authority.  Heck, the staff does temporary shutdowns every
time we need to backup the disks, and all their authority derives from
the board.

I don't think the bylaws require a member vote to dissolve the
corporation or permanently shut down Grex, but I'd favor doing it that
way (if possible) if the issue ever came up.  It hasn't.

response 13 of 73:

Jul 30 04:42 UTC 1999

I've shut down Grex temporarily for various reasons enough times that I've
lost count.  That hasn't been with specific board authority, and sometimes
not even with prior consultation with anybody else, but rather just using my
authority as a staff member.  There have been some shutdowns lasting a whole
weekend or more which have been done by staff members without board approval,
because they were needed for system maintenance.  In this case, nobody was
talking about a permenant shutdown.

As I've said, I'm not on the board anymore.  I wasn't at the meeting. 
However, here's my understanding of the situation.  The judge had promised
to issue a ruling before August 1st.  There was never much doubt that there
would be a ruling one way or the other.  In his ruling, the judge could block
the whole law, or part of the law, or none of it at all.  It seemed quite
likely that the judge was going to block the whole law, in which case this
wouldn't be necessary.  However, if the judge did something less than that,
we would have had to wait for his ruling to see exactly what he did do.  That
ruling might potentially have come with only 24 hours, or I suppose
theoretically less but I'm guessing the ruling was unlikely to get issued on
a weekend, to figure out a course of action.  Given that, the board decided
to do this temporary shutdown in order to figure out what to do.  From my
position as somebody whose no longer on the board, and only does staff stuff
very occasionally, it would be easy to say that the board should have kept
Grex running at all costs without analyzing the risk.  It's the board members,
and probably the more active staff members, who would potentially be facing
jail time over this.  I'm not sure what I would have done in their position,
but what they did certainly strikes me as a reasonable temporary measure.

response 15 of 73:

Jul 30 06:19 UTC 1999

I'll echo Eric.  If the law had gone into effect, the board would have to shut
down Grex because of the *law*, Richard.  

For some odd reason, I just knew he was going to enter this item.

response 17 of 73:

Jul 30 08:02 UTC 1999

<smirks>

response 19 of 73:

Jul 30 13:30 UTC 1999

I don't have a particular view about the Board's *authority*, but
I seriously question its *wisdom*.

The Board did not even give us Grexers the courtesy of posting
a warning about the shutdown in the Message of the Day, as far as
I could see.  I only saw the notice here in the Coop Conference.
Coop is an acquired taste, and notice in Coop alone was grossly
inadequate.

response 21 of 73:

Jul 30 14:46 UTC 1999

I don't like that reasoning.  All of us would have been affected if the 
system had been shut down, not just the Board.  People who depend on 
Grex for their e-mail had the right to expect enough notice to make 
their own arrangements.  There would have been some adversely affected 
people if Grex hadn't gotten lucky about the injunction, and a lot of it 
would have been unnecessary.

I wouldn't have expected Grex to be of the "don't tell people, it's for 
their own good" mindset, and I wouldn't have expected you to be an 
advocate for that kind of position, STeve.

response 23 of 73:

Jul 30 15:44 UTC 1999

STeve has a point.  If it had come out the other way, I'm sure an 
announcement regarding the shutdown would have been posted in the MOTD 
a day or two beforehand.  Grex has been down without announcment before 
(for various reasons), so I would have just assumed it was one of those 
times had it *not* been posted.

Regardless, Grex is not shutting down, so this is all moot.