eeyore
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APRIL BOARD MEETING
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Apr 16 02:55 UTC 2000 |
Well, once again, I'm running behind, thanks to my wonderful work scheduale,
and a grumpy computer. But here goes. :)
Attendees were:
Board: Eric, Greg, Meg, John, STeve, Jan
Non-Board: Mary, Mark, Jessica, Scott, Steve, and login Mermaid, whose
actual real-life name I didn't catch (Sorry!!!)
Gavel banging commenced at 7:05.
Chairman's report: Eric reported that he has hundreds of fonts, and that he
really has nothing ever to report during the Chair's reports.
Treasurer's Report: Gregory reported that we made money in March (I could give
all the exact numbers and such, but they are just going to look exactly
like the numbers that he posts in here and Agora every month, so I give
up on that.) Online charging seems to be working appropriately,
although some potential security problems were discussed. The stock
of the Grex store was also discussed.....we wondered if maybe it was
time to come up with a new T-shirt design, since we haven't sold any
in a really long time. We are also hoping to soon have the credit card
system up and running to buy merchandise from the store and for random
donations.
Publicity Committee Report: Misty wasn't there to make a report. We did,
however, discuss the TOP idea. Eric is going to run as point person
for that, as he works there every year. After some discussion, it was
decided that we'd like to run TOP on donations, rather than take the
money out of the General Fund, with possible makeup coming out of the
Silly Hat Fund.
Tech Committee: STeve reported that he had access to a SUN4-370 to use for
disk formatting & differential disks. We still want a seperate machine
for development disks. The new disk is not yet installed, and /var
is full. There is a problem with backups since our tape drive is
either down or dirty. Brief argument ensued between STeve and Scott
over whether or not Scott had ever cleaned a tape drive before. There
have been requests to raise the !tel line limit, or to find more than
just the last tel with !huh. It was pointed out that ms-p (?) would
take care of that problem. Jan is partway to setting upf a webpage
to let people reset their own password.
Arlo Committee: Scott enjoyed making Arlo paranoid by trying to point out
to him that he (Arlo) only to eat crackers, while his mother Valerie
got the good stuff (Hommus). We later also learned that he has a
vocabulary of 30-40 words, including meow, dog, mommy, and daddy.
Pico License: Nothing could be decided without Marcus there. We need to find
out if Marcus now can own the code now that Netty (?) (the origional
owners) are gone. If he does, will we be allowed to make changes?
It was decided to look into prices of Confer and Yapp as backup plans.
New Business: The auction is still going. New items are still wanted, but
it's looking like it's going to a small auction in the end. There
are a few items that the bidding is closed on, but need followup to
get money from the bidder. A tape disc will be borrowed to make
backups, and then there will be partitioning to free up /c again.
Meeting ended 8:14.
Next meeting will be May 10th. Same Bat-time, same Bat-place.
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janc
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response 3 of 27:
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Apr 16 04:04 UTC 2000 |
I looked into the price of Yapp. The Yapp homepage is at
http://armidalesoftware.com/yapp/yapp.html
The prices are positively humorous. Version 3.0, the web version, can
be had for a mere $3,000. But Backtalk is better and costs less, so we
don't need that. Version 2.3, the command-line version that clones
picospan, costs $9,995 for a unlimited license. (Yes, version 2.3 costs
more than three times as much as version 3.0, but you get a measly 45
hours of support with 2.3). We could probably get by with the 128 user
license, which is only $5,550. We'd probably qualify for a 15%
non-profit discount so it'd only be $4,717,50. Maybe we could save a
few more bucks if we pass on the support contract, though it's not clear
that that is possible. If we decided we really wanted it, we should
talk to Dave Thaler and see if he is serious about these prices.
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pfv
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response 6 of 27:
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Apr 16 05:22 UTC 2000 |
I think Thaler's prices are lower ala' mnut/grex NP.. ($100 is
what I recall) And, yapp is simply a cut ABOVE picospan, although
not "that great" - (OK, "that great" is REAL SUBJECTIVE)..
IAE, yapp is simply a superset of picospan - certainly more
friendly - (the source is still.. umm... "obtuse" is polite).
I'd offer YACS, but I ain't ready, nor will it suffer sun/solaris,
being written for linux and NS, at the moment.
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