[Wplug-internet] Meeting

[Bill Moran]

In response to Bill Moran <wmoran at potentialtech.com>:
> 
> I think I'll force myself to make it to this meeting, although it results in
> my pretty much being either at work or at a meeting all week long ...

Ok, change of plans.

Unfortunately, I didn't realize that this weekend is already the 15th.  I
have plans and will be out of town starting around noon on Friday.

So I won't make it to this one.  I wanted to share some thoughts I had
after some discussion at the GUM on Saturday.

There's a strong feeling on the board against having WPLUG's internet
services hosted in any way that relies on a single person.  This includes
having someone (Ted, for example) donate rack space and bandwidth.

Given the recent difficulties, this is understandable.

But I'm wondering if the problem isn't so much that we had a "favor" or
"single point of failure" so much that we had no exit strategy.

If we hosted with CMU under the gracious offering of Ted, we'd be OK,
as long as we had a strategy/fallback plan on what to do and where to
go if Ted's charity dried up.  There's no reason we couldn't have a signed
agreement with someone at CMU that WPLUG owns the hardware, and in the
event of Ted's termination, untimely demise, or other catastrophe, said
hardware would be turned over to an authorized representative at the
request of the WPLUG board.  If we had a fallback plan (i.e., Joe, over
at Pitt said he could host if need be) this wouldn't be all that big a
deal.

But this sort of thing would have to be worked out _beforehand_, and that
was never done with penguin and its current home.

Anyway, please don't take this as the opinion of the board or anything.
At the last board meeting, the feeling was overwhelmingly against having
penguin hosted anywhere on charity, and (at the time) I was in favor of
that mandate.  I'm just saying that some thought since then has swayed
my (personal) opinion.  I'll bring it up at the next board meeting as well.

Overall, however, I'm very excited to see folks taking the lead on this
project.  Major kudos and thanks to Mike for stepping up to the plate!

-- 
Bill Moran
http://www.potentialtech.com