Item 26. Minutes of the Board Meeting of September 20, 1993
John H. Remmers (remmers) Mon, Sep 20, 1993 (23:36).
98 lines, 35 responses.

 The meeting was called to order by ceremonial gavel-banging at about
 7:30 p.m.
 
 Board members attending:
    Valerie Mates (porcorn) [chair], John Remmers (remmers) [secretary],
    STeve Andre (steve), Mike Smerza (morel), Steve Weiss (srw).
    Absent:  Meg Geddes (meg), Dan Romanchik (danr).
 
 Others attending:
    Rob Henderson (robh), Mary Remmers (chelsea), Robert Smith (fish),
    TS Taylor (tsty), Misti Anslin (mta), Tim Tyler (tnt), Marcus Watts
    (mdw).
 
 Treasurer's report (delivered by Valerie in Dan's absence):
    Memberships are down this month -- only about $30 has been
    collected so far.  As a means of raising funds, Dan has proposed
    contacting high-volume users who are not members and asking that
    they consider membership; he will consult with STeve on the
    feasibility of gathering the necessary data from login records.
 
 JCC Colossal Computer Sale (remmers):
    As usual, Remmers has rented a table for the upcoming sale, which
    will be held at WCC on October 4.  Valerie will enter a linked
    coop/agora item soliciting donations.
 
 New business (tsty):
    While awaiting the arrival of staff members so that technical
    issues could be reported on and discussed, TS Taylor raised the
    issue of offensive login names and advocated that they be
    disallowed.  After a fair amount of discussion on both the merits
    and feasibility of doing so, the consensus was that the discussion
    should be turned over to the users at large.  It was pointed out
    that a mechanism exists for making proposals on-line and bringing
    them to a formal vote of the members, and it was suggested that TS,
    or anyone else who wished to do so, could make such a proposal, or
    enter a less formal discussion item in coop, by way of opening up
    the issue to the users.
 
 Publicity committee (mta):
    Misti is out of brochures and has only a few stamps left, but did
    not want to request money from the treasury at this time as
    donations are low this month.  Several people at the meeting
    donated money to allow Misti to carry on with her brochure mailing
    program.
 
 Technical committee (steve):
    Grex has been experiencing a crash once every few days and a memory
    parity error about twice a month.  This indicates that something is
    starting to go bad.
 
    The high-speed Supra modem used for the news feed is somewhat
    unreliable.  The company has been contacted, but we have not yet
    had a response.
 
    One of the 300mb disks donated by Computer Sciences Corporation is
    not usable; this is delaying the move of Grex to the new Sun 3/260.
    Various options are being explored for switching over to the new
    machine with minimal downtime; we may need to scrounge for some
    additional equipment.  The Sun 3/260 itself has been running for 3
    to 4 weeks and seems quite stable.
 
    The internet link seems stable currently but is slow.  Some
    software changes can be made (such as header compression) to speed
    things up.
 
 Move to new quarters (steve):
    STeve has turned over a copy of the proposed lease to our
    prospective landlord, Nick Contaxis (sp?), but has not yet heard
    back from him.
 
 Internet access for the public:
    The intent is to allow open inbound internet access to Grex, but to
    restrict outbound access to Grex members; the latter restriction
    because of NSF-Net conditions of use.  It is not worthwhile to make
    the operating system kernel changes necessary to enforce this
    restriction on the current Sun 2, as we expect to switch to the Sun
    3 shortly and the changes would have to be redone there.
 
    Originally, the preference of staff was that member access to the
    internet await the move of Grex to the Sun 3 because of reliability
    and performance issues.  However, the consensus of the Board was
    that since switching to the Sun 3 has been delayed, we should make
    outgoing internet access to members available on the Sun 2, with the
    caveat that reliability is still being worked on, performance will
    be slow, and that the access may have to be shut off if it results
    in excessive degradation of system performance, such as slowing
    down news delivery unacceptably.
 
    Open incoming access has been suspended temporarily, as the kernel
    changes necessary to enforce the restriction on outbound access to
    members have not yet been made.  Inbound access will be allowed to
    certain hosts for staff members who are working on and testing the
    connection.
 
 The meeting adjourned at about 9 p.m.
 
                                      Respectfully submitted,
                                      John Remmers, secretary