Minutes for the OCF Board of Directors Meeting February 17, 1998

The meeting was called to order at 8:17 PM

Board members attending:

Elaine Chao (chaos), Jennifer Snider (jenni), Richard Dunn (dunnthat), Luns Tee (tee), Katrina Templeton (katster), Dan Stangel (stangel), Paul Huang (pbhuang), Ahilan Anantha (ahilan)

Others attending:

Alan Coopersmith (alanc), Saar Picker (saarp), Po-Hsun Chen (pochen)

REPORTS

GM: An e-mail was sent to Lee Fink regarding the OCF's chances for an increased budget next year. He stated that $15,000 would not be unreasonable. A request by a Bowles resident for server co-location was made to GM (see NEW BUSINESS). jenni recommended that the GM speak to Sun about the shipping of the Solaris CD, and that the printer in 67a Barrows be repaired before the opening of 217 Eshleman.

SM: After obtaining some cable ties to mount the hard disk, a single DEC was made operational. George also activated some IPCs and an IPX. The monitors still have not been moved. A possible donation was mentioned, the SM will follow up. A reply was received from best.com regarding IPC service (see NEW BUSINESS).

Treasurer: The OCF's remaining funds for this year are $10,572.68, of which $220 are donation and do not need to be spent. Counting money for phone bills for the remainder of the year, this leaves about ~$10,000.

HS: Last week's C help session was very sucessful.

EJC: No EJC business to report UCSEE is sponsoring the Student Professional Awareness Conference on Friday.

OLD BUSINESS

Advertisement - The GM requested the BOD members help out with advertising for the opening of 217 Eshleman. The possibility of hosting a special UNIX help session was discussed with the SM. This session would coincide with the grand opening.

Remaining Funds - The GM took suggestions regarding the best way to spend the OCF's remaining money. Among the suggestions:

• New console machines. Besides low end Sun clients, many members suggested PCs, running Solaris X86 or FreeBSD.
• A new mail server
• Furniture for 217, including rolling chairs, and perhaps new carpeting
• New disks, to raise the quota to 10 MB or more
• A new tape drive, and new auto-loader, to keep up with the OCF's increasing disk space
• A new Ethernet hub, to increase the security of the network

Please also see the discussion under NEW BUSINESS

NEW BUSINESS

IRC - pochen reported on the status of the OCF's possible hosting of an IRC server. After unsucessful attempts to contact representative from best.com or UCI, a message was finally received from best.com. The response asked for a description of the proposed server and the OCF's network. The SM mailed an apparently inaccurate description; he will correct this information. The board discussed again the necessity of hosting an IRC server, considering the low percentage of users that would benefit from it. The GM suggested a posting to the appropriate UCB newsgroups to determine the general campus support for a local IRC server.

Bowles server - A resident of Bowles Hall runs a server for Bowles residents, providing mail and web services. He has contacted the OCF, asking if we would be willing to house the machine over the summer. Considerable discussion followed regarding the feasibility of housing the machine and the possible liability problems involving both the equipment and campus policies. saarp also pointed out that the server does not provide a campus-wide service, which is inconsistent with the OCF's mission statement.

MOTION: chaos motioned that the OCF house the Bowles server over the summer, subject to later determination of the exact conditions. The motion was seconded, and failed 0-5-3.

After the motion, jenni pointed out the necessity of having a general policy considering co-location, especially considering past agreements with the CSUA and UCSEE. It was suggested that a policy mirroring the DUMB policy for disk space be drafted. dunnthat volunteered to draft the policy. The GM informed the board she would advise the Bowles resident that a final decision would be delayed until the policy was completed. The GM also stated that the original message would be posted to bod@ocf.

Machine prices - saarp, jenni, and alanc all presented various quotes for computers the OCF might be interested in. saarp has found a 200 Mhz Dell computer with 19" monitor for ~$2000, and suggested the board buy 3 of these machines to use as consoles. jenni and alanc presented prices for low-end clients, at ~$1500, and higher-end servers, at ~$4000. The board chose to delay a final decision until it can be determined whether purchasing consoles or an additional server would be the best course of action.

BOD meeting times - The BOD meeting time was changed to Mondays at 6:00 PM.

BOD DROPPINGS

Jennifer Tsoi (jentsoi), Rune Stromsness (runes), and David Walthall (land) were dropped from the board for missing two meetings in a row.

The meeting was closed at 10:00 PM.

Minutes prepared by Richard Dunn (dunnthat)