[plug] Re: What would encourage membership of PLUG?

[Tim White]

On 18/02/10 10:19, Bill Kenworthy wrote:
>
> Tim, I have been a member of the mailing list since the 90's - and a
> plug member on and off.  I am quite happy to pay the fees, but lazyness
> and not being "in your face" about renewing it means it doesnt happen
> often.  So step 1 is to send out renewals! - the mailing list being open
> is great and the only service I am using - but that doesnt mean I am not
> willing to be a member - just need prompting.  Especially as an online
> payment was available awhile back - is that still the case?
>    
Mid to late last year, we finally got the renewals email software 
running. It's been a few years in the debugging stage, but it is now 
running. So I guess I should make it email all expired members a 
reminder. It currently emails on the 1st of the month, all expiring 
members (expiring in the month coming up), and all expired members (who 
expired in the month just gone), as well as all new signups waiting 
payment. I thought it was better to only bug once about an expired 
member, but maybe bugging for 6 months is a better idea?

Online payment, we currently support bank transfer, but I am 
investigating paypal for example. (Has some fee's associated with it)

> I have some projects that might be useful to Perth-ites if hosted
> locally as I am wary of putting them up on my iinet a/c, and am happy to
> have it made available to PLUG members only via the plug servers(i.e.,
> value adding to membership).
>
> 1. openstreetmap for WA - static tiles, not dynamically generated.  I
> <snip>
>    
I'm sure we could host this on the PLUG servers. Disk space isn't an 
issue, and I do know of a method to make it only available to members 
(or just WAIX for example). I believe that the /new/ server has enough 
grunt too, if you wanted dynamic generation instead of static. A 
tarball.bz2 upload then rsync for updates would probably be most sensible.
> 2. Openmoko freerunner shr-testing and shr-unstable distros.
> Images/ipk's compiled locally with a custom kernel and cherry-picked
> applications I use.  ~8Gb, but can be reduced a lot (~2-3G) if I clean
> out obsolete builds.
>    
If their is demand, again, we have the disk space. Not sure about 
bandwidth, but can certainly esquire. Another thought, if you think 
there could be demand in the wider community, is to ask someone like 
iinet to host it for WAers on their mirror.

> 3. Bootable usb image for gentoo installs or rescue - I produced it for
> getting a Zotac Ion mini system up and running as a gentoo diskless PXE
> system for mythtv (very nice ... :)  Copy to usb key, dd the MBR across
> and boot.
>    
Sounds like a nice small project that would be great to be hosted.
> 4. possibly other projects ...
>
> Would there be any interest in:
> a. PLUG hosting this?
> b. Users who would use the data?
>    
If their is demand, then I think we can probably host it. (Speaking from 
an admin point of view, would have to run things past the ctte first). I 
know we have hosted other small projects in the past, and all I'd ask is 
that if you run a wiki for example, you keep it secure!