-------------------------------------------------------------------------- Open Computing Facility Board of Directors Meeting 25 April 2000 Board of Directors members present: Stephen Callahan (calman) Eugene Chan (ceugene) Jeff Emrich (jeffe) Gabe M. Gonzalez (gmg) Ivan Jen (ivan) Bem Jones-Bey (ajani) Wayne Kao (kaow) Eddy Lu (eddylu) Stephen McCamant (smcc) Kenneth Ott (kenao) Akop Pogosion (akopps) Susie Tang (suztang) Others in attendance: Gabe Nell Wayne Chan (wyc) The meeting was opened at 5:40. Reports I. GM Report Steve M says we got ASUC funding, the details of which he emailed to the board. Not too much is going on with the lab, according to Ken. We might be getting net after Cordy gets back from vacation, and we're probably not going to open until fall unless the Gateways come in the next week and we get everything setup in a week. Steve M said we could open during the summer, but Ken said no one would come anyway. Bem said we could use summer as a burn-in time, and do a grand opening in fall. II. SM Report Akop says nothing special has happened. DeCal and ASUC web site integration are in progress. Ken says we have a dual-monitor, dual-processor PC setup in Eshleman. Old Business I. Ads on user pages (Superb) Steve M said no one wanted ads on the OCF page because of campus policy, and most people on staff didn't want banners. Other campus groups try to be self-supporting so they sometimes run ads. The Daily Cal is really separate from the campus and is not on the campus name so it's ok that they run ads. Ivan said UC Berkeley doesn't let its entities have ads. Akop said Devin said the biggest problem with us running ads is we're on the berkeley.edu domain name. Superb will be ok with ads once we move it to superb.asuc.org after we get control of asuc.org according to Akop. Ivan says we should put this whole discussion off until next year. Akop said he sent an email to CNS asking about asuc.org but hasn't gotten a reply. Akop says Luns was concerned that virtual domains may ignore our policy requiring a link back to OCF, and it'd be difficult to enforce. Steve M says he doesn't remember us asking ASUC or DeCal that they needed to have a banner linking back to OCF. Akop says that maybe we shouldn't require a banner and instead force a redirect to www.ocf/~whatever. Ken likes the banner idea better. Steve says it doesn't matter as long as OCF gets some recognition for hosting the sites, and we should let hte student group decide. Ivan suggested adding popup advertising OCF and our services, but everyone shouted him down. Ken says for ASUC and Superb, it might be cool if they had a banner at the bottom of their pages. Akop says they already hvae a lot of OCF links. Bem says all we really need is a button, and Gabe concured. Bem said, "a little button is not a bad thing," maybe 1x1 pixels. Akop suggested someone should make a banner; Ken said we already had one. Steve M said for regular www.ocf/~whatever sites, no button is required. There was a consensus that Eugene Chan should make the buton, not Eek. Bem suggested telling Superb that it's against policy to run ads, but we don't want to kick them off, and we're working on a solution. Ken wanted front-row seats to Gladator. Gabe suggested asking IS&T to come to a BoD meeting, but no one thought that was a good idea. Suzie said IS&T will squish everything, and Bem said it's probably not a good idea to get them involved. Bem moved that we go on to the next topic of discussion; Gabe seconded. II. Dormant account policy? Ken suggested we 'sorry' accounts that haven't been used for 10 years, mainly to free up namespaces. Bem said that wouldn't work because the name would still be taken. Bem and Gabe don't think we have a problem with names and a guy had even taken the name "bob" only a few days before. Steve C says problems occur when a person's name ends with "Chan." Gabe said we don't have a problem with names or space; Ken said it's just clutter. Bem said the directory trees are already all messed up, like with /opt/local. Akop was wondering what was up with the "local" part. Akop was wondering if we should do rereg; Ken said maybe we should. Steve M said this dormany account thing could be a rereg substitute. The main difference is that rereg takes away accounts people are using while this would just kill unused accounts. Bem said the process is just as bad as rereg work-wise because you'd have to check web/ftp/pop logs. Akop said we could automate rereg but this would be harder to automate. Gabe was wondering what criteria we should use. Ken said we should send out an email. Akop said we won't find anyone over 10 years old. Steve C said some people don't update pages in a while. Bem said we should do it if it's not too painful to implement since it's a good idea. Steve M said we should do an indefinite postponement of this topic. III. TDA? Akop updated Steve M on what happened last meeting and said a few people counted how many nodes we had while the rest of staff talked about raising quotas. Steve C suggested starting an MP3 server. Bem suggested putting on DeCSS. Ken suggested we move to the next topic. Steve C moved we create a space on the servers for MP3s (under www.ocf/~mp3). Ivan was wondering if this would conflict with university policy. Suzie commented, "This is why he won't get root." Steve C said it's not illegal to create MP3 space because we won't be regulating content. Steve C said, "I mean, we have gay porn on there." Gabe was wondering who would approve this account; Steve C suggested letting Eek approve it. Bem suggested we move on with the meeting, Ivan seconded. Steve M asked Steve C if he had a motion, but Steve C had no motion. Eugene walked in, someone briefed him on the idea, and Eugene said "Hell no". Steve C then motioned we create a user called "mp3" for MP3s with world-readable files and who has no quota and a password "mpiii". Jeff seconded it. Steve M said there's no DuMB so it's up to board. Steve C's motion failed by acclamation. IV. Meeting with CSUA? Bem suggested asking CSUA to have a joint meeting via foodP after the OCF meeting. Steve M said we could also do something more formal. Bem suggested a ballroom dance. Steve M said we could try planning this out in advance a little bit. Nothing was decided. New Business I. Gateway and homepages Steve M said we need to discuss default Gateway homepages which Gateway wanted in exchange for computers. We decided last time that we didn't want to be forced to do a default homepage with BoD approval. Steve M said Cordy already agreed to something apparently without us having to agree to anything. No one really knows what we'd have to do. Akop says he doesn't understand the concept of a default homepage, and it'd be really hard to do. Bem said Gateway doesn't understand that we might not just run Windows on it. Bem said the Gateways will run Windows 2000 and Linux. Eugene was wondering if they'd be login servers; everyone said no. Steve C said we should agree to the default homepage because we shouldn't agree to something we can't implement. Ivan suggested we can dangle a giant cow in the lab instead of doing the default homepage. Steve M was wondering if we should reject the computers altogether. Suzie suggusted telling Gateway that we can't implement the default homepage but that we could loo II. RC5 Proxy? Ken says we should support campus distributed computing by having an RC5 proxy. Suzie said "Huh?" Steve C said no one "gave a fuck." Ken said about half BoD would be interested in this, and it should be server implemented. Bem said Ken should talk to Akop. Bem said the board shouldn't touch it until Ken talks to Akop. III. 'Bot' Policy? Steve M said the policy doesn't specifically mention bots. Akop says our policy doesn't ban them. Ken said our policy doesn't allow egg bots. Gabe said it only covered abusive bots. Bem said we shouldn't have a policy specifically against bots. Akop says bad bots get squished anyway. Ken says there a newsreader on apocolypse right now, and Bem said the root people would look into that. The meeting was closed at 6:50. Recorded by Wayne Kao (kaow).