Also tabled last week was discussion of rewriting OCF Bylaw #5 regarding electronic voting. The bylaw was actually used recently and was found to be unclear as to how many votes a measure needed to pass and how approval for an electronic vote was to be obtained. Jennifer mentioned that Partha sent e-mail suggesting electronic votes only be called for in emergencies. Saar suggested requiring the Site Manager or General Manager to call for an e-vote to make sure they are only called for pressing issues. Andrew said he thought they should not be called for on controversial issues when the Board has not had a chance to hold a discussion on the matter. Michael pointed out that e-voting could be useful over summer and at other times when people can't all get together to vote in person. Chris said there should be a delay to provide a chance for discussion before voting. Alan suggested allowing 72 hours to change a vote in case ongoing discussion changed a voter's mind. Erik Muller was volunteered to write up a proposal for a revised bylaw based on the general consensus of the board's opinions and to present it at next week's meeting.
She reported that she and Alan picked up a Sun SparcServer 4/330 with a 330 M hard disk and 32 M memory and 2 extra 330 M hard disks last week that were donated to the OCF by NEC, thanks to Ken Emery. He also has a Sun SparcServer 4/470 with two 900 M IPI drives for us once the replacement machine for it arrives.
Jennifer told the Board that the OCF spent around $40 during Spring Break to buy supplies for ``Spring Cleaning'' and tools and locks for the Sparcs.
Jennifer said she had contacted O'Reilley and Assoc. about their ``Book Recycling'' program to donate books to non-profit organizations. They charge $100 for shipping and handling of the otherwise free books, so she asked the board if they thought the OCF should spend money to do this and set up a library in the OCF office. Andrew thought it was not a good idea since it would duplicate the services already provided by the CSUA & UCSEE libraries. Michael asked if many students knew about those libraries. Kenji said he thought more people could use an OCF library than the CSUA or UCSEE ones. Alan pointed out that the OCF Library would probably have a different selection of books than the CSUA library, and would cater more towards beginner books than technical Computer Science books. The board voted 11-0 to spend $100 for shipping and handling of O'Reilley Books.
Jennifer said the Sparc Managers were also requesting money. Kenji explained they would need disks for storing mail. software, etc. and all they have are old, slow, mail disks. Amee pointed out that it would be better to use multiple disks to help balance the load. Andrew said their first goal was to get a mail server running on the Sparcs since plague is completely overloaded now. Kenji added that they need to worry about security early, and they plan to work on gopher/ftp/www after mail. David Shih expressed the concern that he didn't want us to buy too much too soon. Kenji & Andrew agreed, but said they need to get disk space before they can get started. Tom Waung pointed out that mail currently takes 460 megs of disk space on plague and that it is always growing and overflowing plague's disk.
Kenji said that 1 gig disks cost about $450-$550 and 2 gig disks cost $800-$1000. Andrew suggested buying one of each size. Kenji said he thought they should buy three disks, either three 1 gigs or two 1 gigs and a 2 gig. After some discussion, the board agreed to allocate up to $2000 to buy two 1 gig disks and one 2 gig disk.
Jennifer then mentioned the OCF needed to buy toner cartridges for the new HP printer. She had Kenji get price quotes, and the best price he had found was $100/each by mail order. The board voted 11-0 to spend up to $250 to buy two new printer cartridges.
Jennifer reported that after her meeting with Katherine Hartsell from Sun, she received an offer of 3 Sun Sparc IPX's with 16 megs RAM, 500 meg hard disks, and color monitors for $8000. Jennifer said this offer did not appear to include the trade-in value of our Sun 3 servers.
Amee reported that she has had problems reaching Rob Kolstad, and so has no firm answer on getting a BSDI license donated. However, if we loan some of our Sparcs to Chris Torek to test BSD/OS-Sparc on, then she feels BSDI is likely to donate a license in return.
The meeting was closed at 8:49 pm. The next meeting will be Tuesday, April 11, 1995 in 120a Bechtel Hall at 7 pm.
Alan Coopersmith, OCF Secretary