Homelessness and the web

[John Johnson]

On Mon, 12 Jan 1998, Joe Mabel wrote:

> [....]
> resend the following paragraph.  SCN should seriously consider this
> policy change: let everyone have shell access if they want it.  If
> Speakeasy can do it without it becoming a security hassle, why can't we? 

Speakeasy also has full-time (= paid) staff.  Does this make a difference?
I suspect so--our volunteer staff (e.g., me) don't put in the hours to
stay on top of problems. 

An even bigger difference: we don't really know who most of our users are. 
Some Freenets require id--we only require a mailing address (and some mail
gets returned to us).  If someone decides to screw up--we may have no
recourse other than turning them off.  They are certainly not loosing any
money if they burn an account.

And shell access is going to mean full Internet access.  (Even if we don't
provide it, some users will be running slirp, etc.)  This could jeopardize
our _free_ Internet access--it seems to have been provided with an
understanding that we would not be providing unlimited access.  If we open
it up, we could possibly have to start paying for it.  And have to start
collecting from our users, with all those attendant hassles. 

With you patient readers that have gotten this far I will share my main
concern:  that 'consideration' of providing general shell access is going
to be limited to 'gee, would that be nice, or what?', and not of the
consequences that could ensue.  Like having to charge to pay for full-time
sysadmins, or Internet access.  Not that this would necessarily happen.
But has anyone considered it?

=== JJ =================================================================

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