OCF meeting 9/20/2007

Attendance: 12 Only akit and wjm are on BoD?

akit wjm jchu elliot dmchan yury sluo stevklaw (steven) sle gcwong sahnn chisheng (aaron)

Budget: $15,303.74

milki's stats for printing costs (gross overestimate): ~$10,000

We're gonna buy 8 new computers - billy: $250 systems at Fry's - yury: we have 5 vistas license and we should make good use of it - it doesn't make sense to have them and not use it - a good video card costs ~$40 - Dell's power supplies suck and fail all the time, but gateways have lasted ~7 years - we could assemble our own off newegg for ~$500 - sle: with $500 we could get a dell with 2 year warranty - billy: let's allocate $4000 for 8 machines

We're going to buy MS Office 2007 licenses - people might have issues with 07 - 03 docs compatible with 07 (but not the other way around?) - MS Pro Plus - yury: office 2007 will probably not run well on win 2000 machines

Fundraising - NSF Grants - sle: he and gordon have been thinking about OCF stickers to pass out to companies, events, etc. - we might be able to get donations of hardware, etc. - steven: laser tag

Movie Night - Transformers at Wheeler 9/20

Possible SF / Angel Island Trip - are people interested?

Email "spamming" - sluo: I wanted a serious policy discussion, if the person doesn't like it he's free to leave

SM AGENDA

Dima's mail forwarding - wjm: We are forwarding dima's mail - we aren't storing his mail, but mail to him will be forwarded - since he has been a staff member for a long time and done a lot of work in the past, Billy thinks this is reasonable

• sluo: He's violated OCF rules multiple times
  • frankly, we don't offer services to people we've disabled-- for a reason
  • disabled people aren't entitled to services
• wjm: I just felt it was a nice thing to do
• sle: let's create a general policy first
• elliot: as a former SM, I felt people desired more that it should be a BoD decision rather than SM discretion
• yury: I think SM needs to be a more powerful position
  • let SMs decide on their own, if people have problems then we'll go back and discusss
• sluo: it would be good to have this policy written in stone because there will be a lot of pushback
  • acceptable use policies are typically thought out quite a bit, and I think ours should be too
• yury: policies are usually made fluid because of pushback
• sluo: but we do need some sort of policy standards set in stone
• wjm: I think we should write a strict policy and have BoD overturn later if necessary
• yury: SM should be a "first line of defense"-- not everything should have to reach BoD

wjm: should hozing policy be punitive or preventative? - should dima be treated like everyone else? - do we want exceptions to the rules, ever, or not? elliot: if we want to be completely by the book for dima, then we should be for everyone else - or if we are thinking about exceptions, we should consider exceptions for dima - wjm: so the question is, should we make exceptions for an old staffer - yury: some people get mail forwarded without an ocf account - sluo: most of these people were dropped for rereg reasons, not because they violated something - dmchan: aaron (over irc) agrees with elliot

sluo: there seems to be some support for giving his account back - dwc has supported disabling his account permanently yury and sluo: - the only times we have permanently disabled accounts: - harrassing "half the campus" with emails - hacking us multiple times

Let's set a deadline for next week's meeting to decide on dima.

sluo: if we forward his email forever, we will have problems later - will create precedent - cause lots of bounces Dima is tabled until next week.

HOZING AND COPYRIGHT ETC - wjm: I personally have no problem with staff using a few gigabytes on /export for music, private use, etc. - we might as well use the space, since we can't give it to others - yury: we could make it public - wjm: but it's harder to manage - wjm: i think we can allow it as a small perk for staffers, that sounds reasonable (specifically with regards to /export) - elliot: I think increasing individual staff members' quotas is better than /export - shifts responsibility to the individual - everyone would have equal quota instead of one person hogging /export - yury: it's better to put stuff on export than on nfs because it (creates load on nfs?) - sluo: it's not hard to go through one export directory - but ex. we disabled a hypothetical root staffer in the future for illegal downloads - now we'd have to go through all the linux boxes - wjm: i don't share sluo's moral outrage about illegal downloading

On Hozing Hard Drive Space:

• wjm: /export is a lot of extra hard drive space not needed for linux, etc.
• users don't have access to it, but staffers can

• actually someone (I forget who) mentioned that users can get access to /export if they ask

• elliot: there's also the aspect of, how much of this is used to serve ourselves?

  • we're using resources that come from the University of California, paid by others
  • is it okay for us to use this all for ourselves?
• yury: there's no other way to use this space

• wjm: there isn't a viable way to make this public

• wjm: it only becomes a problem if someone else notices, and then we can discuss it

• wjm's suggestion: personal hozing space shall be allowed on any one linux desktop
• yury: the "personal" is important because sometimes staffers use it for legitimate staff use

• wjm: if a user requests ability to use space on export i wouldn't have a big problem

• wjm's decision: hard drive space is self-regulating among staffers

• elliot: issue with using a lot of extra resources for yourself

  • if it can't be used for other things, then maybe we can use it
  • but we should have a spirit of self-regulation
  • staff is here to be more morally upstanding than others and to help users out
  • propose we come to some kind of limit
  • would be okay with simply not using the space

• elliot: I urge you to think about who we are as people (and as an organization?)

  • who are we supposed to be servicing?
  • all students pay tuition and some of that goes to ASUC for the student groups
  • is it right if a large chunk of those resources coming from other people's funding goes to ourselves rather than the campus at large? On Hozing Bandwidth:

• sle: we get bandwidth for free right now

  • but if we keep using an increasing amount then we might have to start paying
  • transit cost per megabyte, some departments already have to pay it themselves
  • we do have some big spikes-- 70mbits
  • yury: intracampus traffic is free for campus, doesn't cost anything more
  • sle: isn't sure about that
  • sluo: it's not free beause at some point it will saturate the routers and it will cost somebody something
• sluo: - everything we send outside of UC berkeley borders costs the campus money
  • anything transferred between campus computers is free
• sle: we should monitor bandwidth usage
  • I documented one user using ??? to open mp3 files (easily downloadable)
  • terrabytes per week
  • there's no actual policy
• yury: I set a precedent earlier
• sluo: we've disabled accounts for copyright violation since the ocf started
  • breaking the law is not acceptable use of ocf resources

• (SM precedent is not binding)

• sluo: when we notice intracampus BW spikes we need to investigate anyway

  • because it could mean we're being hacked, etc
  • it costs us staff time to investigate this
• sle: requests approval to give a warning to users for whom we see a lot of transfer
• wjm: copyright violation-- disable immediately until they come in to talk to a staffer
• sluo: I like the idea of people coming in to talk to us

WHAT DOES THE OCF MEAN TO YOU?

• sluo: can we use RAM as a disk rather than temporary storage?
• should there be perks to OCF staff?
  • space, copyrighted material
• wjm: i don't think staff should be more restricted than other users
• wjm: i'm in favor of "only prosecute when caught"-- in terms of storage

• sluo: people using ocf to download illegally?

  • two extremes: actively block bittorrent, vs. not taking action until we get a
  • we want somewhere in the middle Takedown notices

• wjm: i favor using our judgement

• wjm to sluo: what's the problem with waiting until a takedown notice?
• sluo: ISPs deal directly with copyright laws, we don't
  • we don't, but we cause the campus problems
  • if we cause the campus too many problems, they will give us problems
• do we want to wait for a takedown notice to act, or prevent them?
• milki: i think we should be more proactive than rescomp
• sluo: be proactive by looking for bandwidth spikes, looking for processes that might be hozing
• yury: sluo, can you propose a non-invasive... solution to do this?

akit: let's think about what the ocf means to you, what you want out of it, etc.

meeting closes at 8:59