remmers
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response 26 of 28:
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May 23 14:06 UTC 2010 |
Grex (or more properly, Cyberspace Communication, Inc.) is a
Michigan not-for-profit corporation and as such is legally bound
by its Articles of Incorporation:
http://grex.org/cyberspace/articles.xhtml
Here's what the Articles say about our mission:
The Corporation is organized for such charitable and
educational purposes as may qualify it for exemption from the
federal income tax under Section 501(c)3 of the Internal
Revenue Code of 1986, as amended (or the corresponding
provisions of any future United States internal revenue law.)
More specifically, such purposes include, but are not limited
to, the advancement of public education and scientific
endeavor through interaction with computers, and humans via
computers, using computer conferencing. Further purposes
include the exchange of scientific and technical information
about the various aspects of computer science, such as
operating systems, computer networks, and computer
programming.
Is anybody thinking of taking Grex in a direction that's wholly at
variance with this? I'm inclined to doubt it and in any case, the
mission statement is open-ended enough to give us a lot of
flexibility to tweak things, I'd think. Note the "not limited to"
escape hatch, in particular.
Whatever else it is that we might want to do, I do think that Grex
could benefit from a major facelift to the conferencing software,
which is solid and stable but *SO* 1980s. My feeling is that the
rigid and venerable conferencing model on which Grex (and M-Net,
and a few other systems) is based needs a serious re-do in the
direction of more flexibility, probably by recasting it as a web
service with an open API. Something that would facilitate the
development of third-party clients, in much the way that can
currently be done with Twitter, Netflix, and any number of other
web services.
Of course I realize I'm not being very specific at this point, and
that I'm talking about a fairly major project.
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