<div>Some animals are more equal than others, Michael. Anyway, I seem to recall that there were elections for the board. I know I didn't vote in them, but I assume you did. </div>
<div> </div>
<div>On technical grounds, everyone who's commented seems to agree that a VPS would save us money. I've yet to see any claims to the contrary, but maybe I missed them in this huge-ass thread. I'm not personally interested in the ideological aspects, but if everyone else agrees that we should only buy our bandwidth, hosting, and hardware from coops, then that's fine with me, as long as Hcoop remains a worthwhile value proposition for my uses. I'm here solely because it's the cheapest way for me to get what I want. <br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 4:33 PM, Michael Potter <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:mpotter@hcoop.net">mpotter@hcoop.net</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote style="BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; PADDING-LEFT: 1ex" class="gmail_quote">
<div text="#000000" bgcolor="#ffffff">
<div class="im">Adam Chlipala wrote:
<blockquote type="cite"><pre>Michael Potter wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite"><pre>I'm a little suspicious that you're pushing this as an alternative way
to bring on paid staff by at least partially outsourcing them as the
staff of a VPS provider.
</pre></blockquote><pre>I'm disappointed that you're accusing me of this. Do you have any
evidence that _anyone_ involved in this discussion is pushing a secret
agenda? Simple disagreement is no such evidence. For someone who
brings up cooperative principles so much, you seem pretty ready to
ignore the basic standard of civility that makes consensus
decision-making possible.
</pre></blockquote><br></div>It's not exactly a secret, from the thread above:<br><br><quote>
<div class="im"><br><pre>Shaun Empie wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite"><pre><span>> </span>The only reason I was saying it wasn't a great idea is that it will cost
<span>> </span>more in the long run. The setup we have now has fixed recurring monthly
<span>> </span>costs and fixed hw upgrade costs to expand. A VPS has recurring monthly
<span>> </span>costs that go up once we start to expand.
<span>> </span>
</pre></blockquote></div>
<div class="im"><pre>Adam Chlipala wrote:
Right, but a lot of those costs cover staff who keep the hardware in
order, replacements for broken machines, etc..</pre></div></quote><br><br>I think you're confusing directness with incivility. Also, there is no consensus at Hcoop, the board is in control and this list is a courtesy, as you underscore at the end of the message below. <br>
<div class="im"><br>
<blockquote type="cite"><pre>Also, I don't think you ever responded to any of the questions about why
you think paying people to provide services to HCoop is a bad thing.
</pre></blockquote><br></div>It's not the paying so much as the new class of people who are subservient to the board. To pay people enough would cost a lot, and I'm not in favor of exploiting people by paying them too little. Also, having employees is a whole new layer of complexity and could open the co-op to liability. <br>
<br>For what it's worth, my opinion is that VPSes might be worth it if the costs will not go up too much, and I'd really only support getting the service from another co-op like the Tech Co-op we already run the outpost system from, or Cernio if they have the capacity these days. <br>
<font color="#888888"><br>Michael</font>
<div class="im"><br><br><br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite"><pre>There is also the philosophical angle to consider, whether a co-op
should move down one tier closer to retail and feed the for-profit
world. From running all VPSes, it's only one more step to mass
purchasing a web hosting package from a commercial provider with a group
discount, and so outsourcing tech support and software configuration. It
would be more in keeping with the cooperative approach to move UP a
level and provide its own rackspace. This is not exactly trivial though.
</pre></blockquote><pre>That's certainly true. I wrote it before, but it's worth repeating, for
anyone interested in my personal position: I weight quality of service
far ahead of our degree of support for particular kinds of businesses.
In fact, I consider small businesses like Linode to be no worse off,
philosophically, than co-ops, and I consider for-profit businesses to
have significantly higher expected quality of service. I think HCoop
should exist because it isn't very profitable to provide the kinds of
neat niche stuff that our members want.
The degree to which particular ideologies influence co-op
decision-making will be decided by board votes. From discussion on this
list, I get the impression that only a minority of members have any
particular preference for supporting other co-ops and other
"less-businessy-than-usual" organizations, so I expect that we will end
up favoring that position in decision-making. It might be useful to
take some kind of official poll, though.
</pre></blockquote><br></div></div><br>_______________________________________________<br>HCoop-Discuss mailing list<br><a href="mailto:HCoop-Discuss@lists.hcoop.net">HCoop-Discuss@lists.hcoop.net</a><br><a href="https://lists.hcoop.net/listinfo/hcoop-discuss" target="_blank">https://lists.hcoop.net/listinfo/hcoop-discuss</a><br>
<br></blockquote></div><br>