[Hcoop-discuss] Help plan our next server set-up!

[ntk at hcoop.net]

Thanks John for the feedback.  We *need* members to let us know their
parameters for planning purposes.

It has been my position that we should strive to keep base member dues for
minimum services less than $5 per month.  Our hosting costs per member
have been averaging a little over $4 per month lately, not including other
non-monthly costs we've been scheduling in.  Assuming we don't change our
setup this will gradually diminish as the number of users increases.  Of
this a little under $1.50 is for Abulafia.

We don't have any immediate need to increase our infrastructure--we could
easily double our membership just using fyodor, which would cut costs in
half.

So if we want to keeping base member dues under $5, these are our basic
options:

1. Put off investing in new infrastructure until fyodor is closer to
capacity.
2. Have only those "power users" who are interested in utilizing the new
infrastructure pay extra money to fund it.
3. Possibly take Abulafia offline and try to ebay it, as it isn't doing
much and it would save cost-sensitive users like John an extra
$1.50/month.  On the other hand we aren't paying much, we own the server,
and it could be put to better use.

Perhaps we can come up with some combination of 1 and 2.  The number one
thing we can do right now both to reduce our costs now and to increase our
resources for near-future expansion is to RECRUIT NEW MEMBERS.  I've been
happy to see a steady increase in membership, and hopefully everyone will
promote HCOOP to their friends so we can an increasing rate of expansion.*
 After all, expanding infrastructure only makes sense predicated on
expanding membership anyway.

A big problem we need to solve is that having multiple classes of users
when we're not limited by our existing infrastructure leads to pricing
dilemmas.

As a concrete example, the recent case where Terrence asked for a quota
increase of 5 gigs.  Terrence would naturally think--and we agreed for
now--that since there's no shortage of disk space, there is no marginal
cost associated with the 5 gigs and he should not have to pay extra.  It
makes sense.  But on the other hand, John might argue that it is unfair
for him to pay the same amount as Terrence towards the dedicated server,
even though he is using much less of that server's resources and therefore
getting less utility in return.  And while the server is not used to
capacity now, eventually it will be, and how soon is based on the total
usage of all the users.  This also makes sense.

We need to balance the interests of all our users to come up with
something sensible and fair, which allows us to grow but does not price
out cost-conscious users with minimal resource needs.

-ntk


*About promotion the co-op, I haven't forgotten about the T-shirt idea. 
But so far only 17 persons have responded positively that they would buy a
T-shirt (also nobody has volunteered to help make a non-ugly design yet). 
I'm still on for financing, coordinating orders and delivery, but if we
can't get at least 25 or so people willing to buy, we'll have to pick a
different source that allows smaller orders (and likely higher per-person
costs).  I was excited about the Nicaraguan co-op though, so I hope that
we can get more interest, especially new members arrive.