response 100 of 113:

Jun 5 00:46 UTC 1996

I thought we wanted to stop the anonymous icky people, not create a list
of pre-ordained favorite saints.  

response 102 of 113:

Jun 5 03:24 UTC 1996

This item was about the question of whether we should grant any special
privileges to members.  As the writer in #0 points out, there currently are
no such privileges for non-local members (those that telnet in).  That means
there is no incentive for them to give, beyond the warm fuzzy feeling it
gives them to help Grex.  Question: should we rely on the warm fuzzy feeling
to pay our bills, or should we start acting more like a service provider and
grant some special privileges to members?  What about the fact that paying
members have just as much trouble telnetting in as everyone else (i.e., it's
painfully slow sometimes).  Is it fair that people who pay should have to
suffr because people who don't are clogging the link?

I don't have any real answers here, I'm just reiterating the issues. 
Personally, I'm in favor of depending on the warm fuzzy feeling.  But I can
tell you our finances haven't been too good the last two months, so I am
cautious.

response 104 of 113:

Jun 5 07:06 UTC 1996

Which takes us back to where we started. We don't charge for *any* services,
and should not start now, in my opinion. There are no "people that pay" -
there are only people that donate enough money to become members and have
voting privileges (which is not considered a "service" in law). So, lets
not start thinking of charging for anything. 

Except things we want to sell. Our "store" is pretty puny - some T-shirts
and mugs....once upon a time. If anything, our model is public radio,
and some of them sell stuff to raise funds. They also have fund raising
gimmicks. They also badger their users to support the system they enjoy.
We should be able to badger users better - after all, we can automate
it. There were in fact all sorts of suggestions along these lines in this
item - which ones have been implemented? We don't need to go back over
the same ground, if nothing is going to be done about all the good ideas
for badgering non-supporting users. Try badgering first, and see what 
that does for our support.

response 106 of 113:

Jun 5 10:58 UTC 1996

Well, there's outgoing telnet and ftp, which are still members only.

response 108 of 113:

Jun 5 12:49 UTC 1996

For the majority of our users, I think they already have.
Once upon a time, I was constantly getting writes and mails
from users asking about telnet access.  I think I've gotten
one such request in the last four months.

response 110 of 113:

Jun 5 18:28 UTC 1996

  To clarify M-Net's plan, they recently approved an approach whereby
half their dial-in lines, and half their telnet ports, would be available
only to paying members (and some dial-in lines further reserved for
higher-contributing members), with the other half available to anybody.
This cuts down on busy signals and "all ports in use" messages for members.
Their funding pattern is similar to Grex's, with non-local users using
the majority of their resources (except modems/dial-in lines), but very
few contributing financially.

response 112 of 113:

Jun 5 22:18 UTC 1996

Outgoing telnet and ftp are members-only, but not as a service: this is to
manage the resource, as it was then thought that it would be overused and
abused if it was not limited and controlled. If it is not in much demand
now, we might as well as open that to non-members too (except I think we
want to retain the requirement of ID).