Why FreePort? (was RE: OPS: Re: implementing upgraded...

[Rod Clark]

> -SCN General Meeting  -  May 28,1997
> -35 attendees
> -
> -Registration ad-hoc subcommittee met twice; came up with recommendation
> -of electronic database with partial electronic (online) registration a
> -reality. Need to contact other freenets about their processes.  The
> -Chebucto package includes online registration, but the hardware
> -committee needs to test it further prior to offering it to SCN.
> 
> You're making my point for me. Unconscionable delay.

Andrew, 

   If it were possible to do it with the minimal Operations
volunteer time that's available, we would have done it already.
Moving to Chebucto is a major change, and involves a
considerable part of what it would take to start up a new
community network from scratch. Just keeping up with the
maintenance and problems that we already have is more than
enough workload for the existing tech volunteers.

   Unlike some other community networks, SCN doesn't have lots
of big-time project managers and highly technical volunteers
lavishing a lot of hours on it. It has one of the tiniest and
most inadequate budgets of any community network in the country.
It's shunned by the media, and exists at a low level that's
outside of most people's field of attention.

   SCN has no staff in its nonexistent office, whose job it
would be to keep things on track all day every day,. There is no
office where the technical volunteers can physically meet and
work on these things whenever they have time from day to day, as
the typical community network has.

   Since SCN has chosen to stay away from corporate and
government funding, and it's comparatively not too well known
and not necessarily too well respected among many established
and capable people who would help it if it were closer to their
tastes or pocketbooks or resumes, all we have is a few
individualistic and largely unsupported technical volunteers who
devote what little time they can to it. This is a
lack-of-skilled-hours problem, not a matter of whether we want
to improve the system.

Rod Clark

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *  From the Listowner  * * * * * * * * * * * *
.	To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to:
majordomo at scn.org		In the body of the message, type:
unsubscribe scn
==== Messages posted on this list are also available on the web at: ====
* * * * * * *     http://www.scn.org/volunteers/scn-l/     * * * * * * *