Voice Board of Directors Meeting
January 14, 2008
Present:
Roderick Klein, President <Roderick>
Gordon Snider, Treasurer <Gord>
John Edwards, Secretary <JWE>
Neil Waldhauer, Guest of Board <Blonde_Guy>
Christian Hennecke, Guest of the Board <hennecbk>
NOTE: All time references are Eastern Standard Tim
09:03:26 <Roderick> I asked Christian to join this session.
09:03:33 <hennecbk> Hello everybody.
09:03:43 <Roderick> Welcome everybody.
09:03:44 *** Blonde_Guy (~chatzilla@dsl-63-249-111-252.cruzio.com) has joined #voice [09:03:44]
09:03:50 <Roderick> Tape recording running ?
09:04:06 <JWE> Logging is on
09:04:10 <Roderick> Thanks.
09:04:18 <Roderick> Well Neil certainly needs a cup of coffee.
09:04:20 <Roderick> Welcome.
09:04:30 <Roderick> Its 6 o'clock in the morning on your side.
09:04:36 <Roderick> Brave to get up that early :-)
09:04:55 <Blonde_Guy> Hi. Hope you are all well.
09:05:20 <hennecbk> A belated "Happy new year!"... :-)
09:05:32 <Roderick> The same to all.
09:05:41 * Roderick looks for the half empty champagne bottle :-)
09:06:08 <Roderick> Oke this OS/2 voice session is now in session.
09:06:15 <Roderick> John Edwards is taking notes.
09:06:34 <Roderick> Welcome everybody. As you have seen I have written some proposal text for members
09:06:39 <Roderick> to read and they can vote on.
09:06:58 <Roderick> I will be honest to much longer that I expected and it was mostly a copy paste from what was already written.
09:07:06 <Roderick> So i could have done it a lot faster.
09:07:36 <Roderick> Then again I hope you all had a chance to read it.
09:07:46 <hennecbk> Yes.
09:07:57 <Gord> Yes
09:08:17 <hennecbk> Looked fine to me. The question is what to send in an email message to the members and what to put up on the web site.
09:08:23 <JWE> yes
09:08:30 <Roderick> And if so if the text to send to members to explain everything is oke and the text is oke.
09:08:31 <Roderick> Aaah oke.
09:08:40 <Roderick> I send 3 messages.
09:08:44 <Roderick> One for an email to send
09:08:56 <Roderick> and two emails with the subject proposal 1 and proposal 2.
09:09:02 <Roderick> This was intended to put on the website
09:09:09 <Roderick> with a vote button/
09:09:16 <hennecbk> OK, I see. I somehow mixed that up.
09:09:47 <Roderick> The thing is everybody seems to be oke with the text...
09:09:56 <Roderick> I would like to suggest that in the text we send out to the members
09:10:20 <Roderick> that we also include the link to the two IRC sessions we had.
09:10:23 <Roderick> So they can read that.
09:10:39 <Roderick> That we also meet the requirments to inform our members what the status of voice is.
09:10:51 <Roderick> how much members we have and how much money we have.
09:11:40 <Roderick> Neil did you read the text about cups ?
09:12:46 <Blonde_Guy> I'm just re-reading now. Is the PDF the one I submitted before?
09:13:09 <Roderick> yes
09:13:51 <Roderick> basicly the email to be send to the members and proposal one about cups is not a problem.
09:13:58 <Roderick> Proposal 2 is a bit more problematic :-)
09:14:16 <Roderick> I seem to remeber the board did not have time to discuss proposal 2.
09:14:22 <Roderick> About warpevents.eu
09:14:32 <Roderick> and the ecomstationnews.com website.
09:14:38 <Roderick> Lastly it was not officialy voted on.
09:14:50 <Roderick> I did write the text for the proposal to be send to the members.
09:15:05 <Roderick> But I want to know if the two other board members think of the proposal.
09:15:35 <Gord> I sent you one editorial change to the wording of the eCUPS proposal.
09:16:07 <Gord> I feel neutral about the Warpstock.eu proposal.
09:16:36 <Roderick> Gordon and John do you both understand that this will even have more benefits
09:16:46 <Roderick> for news distribution in the community.
09:16:56 <Roderick> I also feel the text may not reflect it clear enough.
09:17:04 <Gord> Maybe I don't understand fully.
09:17:06 <Roderick> The project was started for Warpstock Europe.
09:17:13 <Roderick> To manage the website good.
09:17:37 <Roderick> However it has grown to such a large degree the typo 3 engine can also be used for news distribution to other websites in the OS/2 community.
09:18:12 <Roderick> os2.org, baywarp user group use the website.
09:18:24 <Roderick> Os2world is in the waiting room to be hooked up.
09:18:52 <hennecbk> May I add a few points, Roderick?
09:19:00 <Roderick> Of course!
09:19:25 <hennecbk> I think we need to look at different aspects of the thing.
09:19:53 <hennecbk> Basically, warpevents.eu provides infrastructure for hosting and information exchange.
09:20:35 <hennecbk> Currently, there's the Warpstock Europe web site, the warpevents.eu web site, and then there's ecomstationnews.com.
09:21:09 <hennecbk> There already is an eComStationNews.com web site running on a Mensys server.
09:21:49 <hennecbk> Its purpose was to act as a central point of collecting and providing news so nobody doesn't miss anything any more.
09:22:17 <hennecbk> "Providing" in the sense of providing to web site maintainers, not end-users.
09:22:57 <hennecbk> The thing is that in the past, very few people have wanted to join because of concerns regarding Mensys and censorship/monopolization of information.
09:23:47 <hennecbk> This summer, Mensys decided to do something against this and asked us to migrate the site elsewhere.
09:24:32 <hennecbk> TYPO3 provides quite a few things that are required for running such a thing and hosting another site in the same TYPO3 installation wasn't a problem.
09:25:12 <hennecbk> So we went and did that. You can see a preliminary version of the frontend at news.warpevents.eu.
09:27:09 <hennecbk> Besides the already mentioned stuff, this has also the advantage that its more or less automatically maintained since we take care of the installation for the other sites anyway.
09:27:35 <hennecbk> And TYPO3 is pretty well monitored in regards to security.
09:27:59 <hennecbk> So much for eComStationNews.com.
09:29:18 <hennecbk> As far as event web sites go, we have only hosted Warpstock Europe so far. But basically anybody who wants to run an OS/2 event can use our platform.
09:29:57 <hennecbk> And then there's the information archive at warpevents.eu that deals with how to actually prepare and run such an event.
09:30:48 <hennecbk> So far, that information has not been public.
09:31:34 <Gord> Since most of our members (and hence votes) are in America you should arrange these facts so Americans can see a benefit to them, perhaps through eCS support.
09:31:37 <hennecbk> The idea is to publish a subset so anybody who thinks about doing an event can see for himself if he's up to it.
09:32:11 <Gord> or maybe eCUPS support???
09:33:22 <hennecbk> eCUPS support? Sorry, I don't understand.
09:34:17 <Gord> IIRC, Blond-Guy mentioned supporting an eCUPS website.
09:34:33 <Roderick> The main reason for putting this item to vote
09:34:39 <Roderick> is about the eComStation news system.
09:34:48 <Roderick> And that will benefit members all around the world.
09:35:06 <Roderick> About maybe the orginal email did not reflect this clearly enough.
09:35:19 <Gord> Understood, and we do have members all around the world.
09:35:42 <Blonde_Guy> hennecbk, have you seen the Warpstock cookbook? http://www.warpstock.org/article.php?story=ws_cookbook
09:35:44 <hennecbk> Well, we could also host the VOICE web site, including support structures for products like eCUPS and PMMail.
09:36:07 <JWE> How does warpevents.eu tie-in with the current os2voice.org web site? Does it duplicate, supplement or replace the current site?
09:36:25 <Roderick> It could replace the website
09:36:29 <Roderick> but its not needed.
09:36:45 <Roderick> One of the reasons behind the news system is because a lot of volenteers do repeated tasks.
09:37:03 <hennecbk> Blonde_Guy: Yes, I've been working on integrating that information on our site -- which already contains much more BTW. :-)
09:37:04 <Roderick> Distributing news is a nightmare for anybody wanting to annouch a new piece of software.
09:37:09 <Gord> Also, the current proposal was for a few years. If we use the site heavily we could be locked in to further support.
09:37:37 <Roderick> Gordon what do you mean with locked in ?
09:38:38 <Gord> If VOICE doesn't support it past the original time period it would fold if VOICE stops sending money, causing the downfall of a lot of eCS support.
09:38:59 <hennecbk> JWE: with ecomstationnews.com hosted at warpevents.eu, the os2voice.org web site would draw its news from ecomstationnews.com and redirect any submissions back to there.
09:40:52 <hennecbk> Well, things do cost money and/or man-power in any case.
09:41:04 <Roderick> Well in my view thats something to worry about in three years time
09:41:09 <Roderick> and Mensys would also do funding.
09:41:25 <Roderick> Right now Thomkas Klein is spending about 300 to 400 Euro's about of his own pocket each year
09:41:28 <Roderick> to keep this running.
09:42:02 <Roderick> And right now I see more downfall of OS/2 support because not enough people in the community are stepping forward to help out.
09:42:13 <hennecbk> The thing about all this is to reduce the need for man-power.
09:42:29 <Roderick> There are enough people but everybody (because of different reasons) does not have that much time or no time at all.
09:42:53 <JWE> The concept of a central ecomstation news collection system/site has a lot of positives going for it. BUT, the main drawback is the commitment of the various news distribution sites to join in both in supplying news items and in using the news items from the central repository.
09:43:09 <Roderick> Well os2world.com
09:43:11 <Roderick> and os2.org
09:43:22 <Roderick> join and ecomstation.lcom and ecomstation.ru will join.
09:43:29 <hennecbk> JWE: That's exactly why it was decided to migrate the thing away from Mensys.
09:43:57 <Roderick> Look maybe the biggest toxic in the OS/2 community is the rusty communication
09:44:08 <Roderick> and this news distribution is one thing to try and make things run smoother
09:44:15 <Roderick> and get some more juice back in the community.
09:44:18 <Roderick> Hence the proposal.
09:44:33 <Gord> OK. I would support that.
09:45:12 <Roderick> I just did not want to commit for 5 years. Its a start to support somebody who is trying to do something which can have large community benefit.
09:45:28 <hennecbk> I think the biggest problem we have at the moment is that nobody participates fully.
09:45:37 <JWE> Many of the current sources have a vested interest in what they are currently doing things, their current way and would need to be convinced of the benefits to change.
09:45:54 <Roderick> Marc dodel wants to help.
09:46:01 <Roderick> With processing news!
09:46:20 <hennecbk> OS2.org is also no problem once we get the thing off the ground.
09:46:29 <hennecbk> They are already drawing news from the system.
09:46:36 <Blonde_Guy> is Steve Wendt's OS/2 News and Rumors to be included in the news exchange?
09:46:47 <Roderick> Well somebody needs to talk to him :-)
09:46:52 <hennecbk> We'd certainly invite him.
09:47:01 <Roderick> Infact there is a mailing list
09:47:09 <Roderick> and he is on this mailing list.
09:52:13 <Roderick> I just spoke with Christian.
09:52:23 <Roderick> He will next week rewrite the text.
09:52:36 <Roderick> basicly it will put an bigger focus on the newssystem.
09:52:50 <Roderick> And that is what this whole subsidy idea for Thomas Klein is about!
09:53:07 <Roderick> It started with Warpevents.eu but the news system will be much more beneficial for everybody.
09:53:28 <Roderick> Do any of the board members have any questions or doubts about this project ?
09:53:38 <JWE> What is the specific request being make to VOICE members? Not the proposal but the commitment of VOICE to the project in money and time.
09:54:08 <Roderick> Oops maybe I did not write it that clearly.
09:54:17 <Roderick> In terms of time it would not be that much time.
09:54:31 <Roderick> Thomas Klein will send an invoice to the treasurer each year.
09:54:39 <Roderick> And it would cost about 400 to 500 Euro per year.
09:54:45 <Roderick> Hosting of the typo 3 enviroment
09:55:01 <Roderick> and the domain stuff.
09:55:14 <Roderick> I want to propose in this proposal to do this for 3 years.
09:56:18 <Roderick> Did I answer your question sufficient in this way ?
09:56:48 <Roderick> And the request to voice members is if they want to vote yes or no on this item :-)
09:57:11 <hennecbk> Just to add a bit of information: That amount of money would not only cover the cost but also help with further development.
09:59:29 <Roderick> Gordon and John I understand you guys have questions on this item.
09:59:39 <Roderick> Since Christian and I talkes a lot about this project.
10:00:01 <Gord> I am Googling the TYPO3 website now.
10:00:05 <Roderick> Do you understand the mayor idea behind and do you have any other question.
10:00:09 <JWE> So basically, this is a request of VOICE for about $640.00 USD per year for 3 years or a total expenditute of $1920 over the 3 years.
10:00:17 <Roderick> yes
10:00:33 <Roderick> The problem is that a lot of the typo 3 stuff we need does not run on Os/2.
10:00:49 <Roderick> I wish it BTW would because we would instantly host it :-)
10:01:28 <Roderick> Gordon you have any questions ?
10:01:49 <Gord> Not now.
10:03:05 <Roderick> What I want todo is put this item to the vote of board members
10:03:12 <JWE> For its financial support, what does VOICE get in the way of control of the project?
10:03:33 <Roderick> Well nothing basicly.
10:03:41 <hennecbk> JWE: As far as eComStationNews.com is concerned, definitely nothing.
10:03:52 <Roderick> Of course we could include in the final proposal text
10:03:57 <Roderick> a limit on the amount of money.
10:04:05 <Roderick> Like a maximum of 500 Euro's per year.
10:04:06 <hennecbk> That is part of the agreement to avoid concerns regarding censorship.
10:04:46 <hennecbk> That does not mean, however, that VOICE members cannot be news editors. Mark Dodel would be one of these.
10:06:27 <hennecbk> Well, actually, VOICE could "control" the thing by making sure no censorship is executed.
10:08:17 <Gord> How about 'moderation'?
10:08:54 <Roderick> Gordon I would like to know
10:09:02 <Roderick> what your motivation is behind this question.
10:09:29 <Gord> I'm thinking about the 'Timmies' and 'Jamies'.
10:09:31 <hennecbk> Gord: What exactly do you mean? Of course, any news editor is something of a moderator.
10:09:37 <Roderick> This sponsorship is a genereal donation to the community as a whole to get people better informed.
10:09:52 <Roderick> As with cups we also have no control realy in the sense that software is ported.
10:10:12 <Roderick> Its a push in the back to keep eCS/OS/2 on track and to keep people informed about OS/2 also outside the VOICE community.
10:10:31 <Gord> sorry, the 'Jeramies'.
10:11:16 <hennecbk> Ah, you mean Tim Martin and Jeramie Semphere?
10:11:21 <Gord> Yes
10:11:53 <hennecbk> Well, the news editors have several tasks:
10:12:42 <hennecbk> Checking for factual correctness, checking for some rules of conduct, proof-reading, translation
10:13:15 <hennecbk> As far as I'm concerned, that includes filtering of SPAM and FUD.
10:14:15 <Roderick> Then again Tim Martin is gone
10:14:31 <Roderick> and what happened to Jeramie
10:14:33 <Roderick> no clue.
10:14:46 <hennecbk> Well, I guess there will always pop up a new loony...
10:14:50 <Roderick> Then again I can understand your concerns but what I try to bring accros.
10:15:10 <Roderick> is that the news distribution is maybe the biggest reason why people leave OS/2.
10:15:18 <Roderick> lack of communication not enough people hearing about stuff.
10:15:26 <Roderick> And the other problems can fixed later.
10:16:14 <JWE> MOTION: That VOICE provide financial support to the the Warpevents project to a maximum of 500 euros per year for a period of 3 years, subject to an annual review of this funding.
10:17:21 <Gord> Is the annual review to start after the 3 year period, or during?
10:17:33 <Roderick> No each year
10:17:40 <Roderick> So at the end of 2009.
10:17:49 <Roderick> Thomas Klein must send an invoice to you in Euro's.
10:17:54 <Gord> Who will do the review?
10:18:09 <Roderick> So we can see what the claim is about.
10:18:13 <JWE> The review will be done by the Board.
10:18:15 <Roderick> Its about web hosting for typo 3
10:18:20 <Roderick> and the domain names they pay for.
10:18:28 <Roderick> Thats what the invoice should state.
10:18:51 <Roderick> And if you need help I can help to clarify the invoice.
10:18:52 <Gord> I vote we put this to the membership.
10:19:25 <Roderick> In favour of this.
10:19:31 <JWE> agreed
10:19:43 <Gord> agreed
10:19:49 <Roderick> Agreed.
10:19:55 <Roderick> So we have a 100% agreed board.
10:20:11 <Roderick> I would like to thank you for your support.
10:20:23 <Roderick> I will work out the details with Christian and Ken
10:20:29 <Roderick> so the proposals can be put online.
10:20:43 <Roderick> I will rewrite the proposal text for the proposal 2
10:20:57 <Roderick> on the warpevents.eu sponsorship and post that for final review to the
10:21:05 <Roderick> (Well Christian will).
10:21:15 <Roderick> After that we can put the text online and let the members vote :-)
10:21:17 <hennecbk> Roderick, could you also talk to Ken regarding the "reversal" of the news flux?
10:21:44 <Gord> Why a 'reversal'?
10:22:04 <Roderick> The idea is that websites that GET news also use our submit form...
10:22:07 <hennecbk> Currently, the VOICE News list feeds eComStationNews.com. We need this to be the other way round.
10:22:55 <hennecbk> Then also Mark can become news editor at eComStationNews.com and the approved items simply get fed into the mailing list.
10:23:41 <Roderick> Is there anything else the board members would like to discuss right now ?
10:23:45 <Gord> So the VOICE news mail list and the eCSnews mail list each need to have the other on the mail list, (but watch out for endless loops). 8-) )
10:24:11 <hennecbk> No, that's not quite it.
10:24:45 <hennecbk> Once the thing runs as intended, the only direction is eComStationNews.com -> VOICE News list.
10:25:30 <hennecbk> Anything submitted at the VOICE site will be directly fed into eComStationNews.com.
10:25:41 <hennecbk> This should avoid problems with doublettes.
10:25:52 <Gord> Oh. So any item that gets submitted to VOICE goes only to eCS and is only published in VOICE when it comes back from eCS?
10:26:05 <hennecbk> Exactly.
10:26:53 <hennecbk> That should help get rid of a lot of overhead.
10:29:50 <JWE> eComStationNews needs to draw up a terms of use document that can be agreed to by the editors of the various current news list and eComStationNews.
10:31:41 <JWE> If there are no other matters to be discussed, then I would move that this Board meeting be adjourned.
10:31:54 <hennecbk> JWE: That's a good idea.
10:32:01 <hennecbk> I mean the terms of use.
10:32:43 <JWE> The terms of use should put everyone on the "same page' so to speak.
10:32:51 <Gord> Have the details all been settled for membership notification on these two issues?
10:33:14 <Roderick> What do you mean Gord ?
10:33:23 <Roderick> I gues we will send an email
10:33:29 <Roderick> to the members, we did that before.
10:33:46 <Gord> Oops. I look back on the screen and I see what I what I'm looking for.
10:36:37 <JWE> I have already placed a motion for adjourment. Is it now in order to vote on that motion?
10:36:43 <Gord> Aye.
10:36:45 <Roderick> aye
10:36:49 <JWE> aye
10:37:02 <Roderick> Thanks for your time and thank you Christian for informing us about
10:37:06 <Roderick> the news system.
10:37:15 <Roderick> I'm still at work have to move to other stuff now.
10:37:19 <Roderick> Thanks for mcing!
10:37:22 <Roderick> coming!
10:37:29 <hennecbk> My pleasure.
10:38:48 <hennecbk> Bye.