[H-ANNOUNCE] Minutes of the Executive Meeting 12 May 2001

Raymond Smith raymonds at uq.net.au
Tue May 15 23:39:03 EDT 2001


Attached are the minutes of the 12 May 2001 Executive Meeting.

Raymond Smith
Secretary of HUMBUG 2000/2001              mailto:secretary at humbug.org.au
Home Unix Machine - Brisbane User Group    http://www.humbug.org.au/
-------------- next part --------------
               Minutes of an Executive Meeting of the
              Home Unix Machine -- Brisbane User Group
                           held 12 May 2001

Opening
-------

The meeting opened at 5:00PM in room S201, Hawken Engineering Building,
University of Queensland.

Attendance
----------

Executive Members:
	Brent Wesley (President), Mark Suter (Treasurer), 
	David Makepeace (Librarian), and Raymond Smith (Secretary). 

General Members:
	Bruce Campbell, Gary Curtis, Bradley Marshall, Andrae Muys, 
	Jason Parker, Clinton Roy, and Anthony Towns

Guests:
	Paul "Rusty" Russell (hacker-at-large) and Anand Kumria (Linux 
	Australia / SLUG)

Absent Executive Members:
	Robert Brockway (Vice-President, no apology).


Welcome to Guests
-----------------

Brent welcomed Rusty and Anand to Brisbane. They were visiting us to 
speak to the Linux Conference 2002 Organising Committee.

Reports
-------

Offices bearers had nothing significant to report since the SGM.

HDD & Caliburn
--------------

Brent Wesley has taken over ordering the new HDD for Caliburn. Bruce
Campbell will do the upgrade as soon as Brent can get the drive to 
him. As Zerlargal acts a secondary for most Caliburn services we do
not expect any outage from this upgrade.

Hydra
-----

There are some questions over Hydra's integrity after its recent
power-supply meltdown. The machine locks up under heavy (kernel
compile) loads. The CPU fan had failed at some point so this could
be due to heat. Brent Wesley has a Celeron process we can try out.

Brent also reported that service from Compucom has been very poor;
they did not test the machine after replacing the power supply. He
has expressed his concerns to Compucom.

Mirror Aarnet
-------------

Of interest is the move of mirror.aarnet.edu.au from the University 
of Queensland to the Australian National University.

Overtraffic on Caliburn
-----------------------

Raymond Smith reported that Caliburn had contributed to excess 
traffic. (Raymond Smith and Bruce Campbell host caliburn in 
privately leased rackspace at the University of Queensland.) He
futher reported that while not necessary this quarter, it may be
necessary next.

Brent Wesley said that if HUMBUG traffic has incurred a charge
then HUMBUG should pay. 

He moved a motion that "HUMBUG pay any excess traffic charge from 
caliburn.humbug.org.au". The motion was seconded by David Makepeace.
The vote was passed two in favour and two abstaining (Mark Suter
and Raymond Smith who both have a financial interest in the leased
rackspace.)

Brent further instructed Raymond and Mark to work out the cost, 
reimburse themselves, and then provide proof (receipts, etc) to
the next executive meeting.

l.c.a
-----

The executive had previously been made aware of financial constraints
on the organising committee of the Linux Conference 2002. The main
issue being the booking of rooms through the University. Jason Parker 
informed the executive that it was unlikely that the organising 
committee would need financial assistance. 

Nevertheless, the executive felt it worthwhile to authorise a loan to 
the committee to provide a safety net for future problems. Brent Wesley
moved a motion that the executive 
	"Authorise a loan of up to $2500.00 to the Linux.conf.au 2002
	Organising Committee, interest free, to be repaid in full 
	by the Ides of March."[1]
the motion was seconded by David Makepeace and passed unanimously.

Installfest
-----------

After some discussion those present at the meeting agreed that it
would be good for HUMBUG to support a national installfest. Rusty
Russell informed the meeting that there was some movement towards
an international event. Anand Kumria informed us that the tentative
date is the third weekend of August. Rusty and Anand also gave us
the low down of installfests in other cities. SLUG had 120 installs.

One particularly cool idea is having installers wear t-shirts with
'LILO' in large letters on the back. Linux Australia plans to make
these T-Shirts.

Action Items:
	Raymond Smith and Mark Suter to set up mailing list for
	helpers and make call for helpers to announce.

Banning People
--------------

Brent Wesley informed the club that for the first time in its
history we need to ban people. Two members were engaging in
abuse of the network (downloading copyright movies), and were
doing so using Windows. After they were expelled from the meeting
they spread food and rubbish over Brent's car. This flouts the 
principles for which HUMBUG stands and the provisions against 
Non-UNIX operating systems at club meetings.

As Brent was the only executive present at the time, they could
not be banned. (A banning requires two or more executive members
to agree.) As the full names of the perpetrators are unknown at
this time we did not ban them at the executive meeting. However,
should they reappear they will be banned.

Clinton Roy asked if measures had been put in place to lock
network access to windows machines. Plans to do this had been
discussed at previous executive meetings. Mark Suter reported that
we do have programs to do this. There was some debate about 
particular approaches.

Other Business
--------------
  
   Incorporation
   -------------

Brent raised the subject of incorporation to be greeted with some
scepticism. He would like to see the club become incorporated before 
he finishes his presidency and was willing to work out the mechanics.
This concrete proposal was greeted with support from club members present.

Anand Kumria offered an idea of costs in NSW to incorporate. Around
$100 to register and public liability insurance of around $500 per
year. Other burdens are the need to maintain an up-to-date membership 
registry and to file minutes and financial reports. None of this 
sounded onerous to the executive.

Action items:
	Brent will investigate legal requirements for 
	incorporation and insurance.

   New Members
   -----------

Raymond Smith raised the issue of dealing with new members. 
Gary Curtis suggested that we need to have a designated newbie 
hat meeter and greeter. Raymond suggested that he and Gary take 
turns. Raymond also expressed a desire to see more done for new
members.

Action items:
	Raymond and Gary to work out a meet-and-greet type
	scheme.

Close
-----

The meeting was closed at 6:00pm.

Footnotes
---------

[1] "Ides of March" is the 15 March. This is approximately one month
    after the conference.



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