[HCoop-Discuss] Membership freeze?

[Adam Chlipala]

Terrence Brannon wrote:
> What would you say is the highest priority of the hcoop? Reducing
> duplicate work of volunteers? Engineering the best software system for
> cooperative hosting? Insuring constant revenue? Reducing cost by
> increasing member base?
>
> I would say that latter 2 are most important and nothing should ever
> be done to decrease this. The first 2 are considerations, but the last
> 2 are necessities.
>   

I would say that none of these that you list is a primary concern for 
us.  Keeping work for volunteers at levels that they're comfortable with 
falls out as a requirement for any organization with no paid staff.

We're not a business, so revenue doesn't matter.  We only seek it out as 
a tool to provide quality service to members.  Similarly, we might in 
some situations decide that increasing membership helps provide better 
service (which concept can include lowering prices), but it is not a 
primary goal.

> If you want the privilege of divorcing yourself from the old
> architecture then you have the responsibility of a timeline for doing
> so.  Sure, you can hack on SMLweb ad hoc whenever you want, but you
> are running a business with performance and service obligations to a
> large (and growing) number of people who were promised pricing within
> a certain range.
>   

I say with the greatest respect possible that you have just shown that 
you have no idea what you're talking about.  Delays have had no 
component of me hacking on any new software.  I finished substantially 
all of that, on my own time with no effect on anyone else, before 
suggesting that we begin buying hardware for a new installation.  What's 
holding us up now is all mundane, traditional UNIX sysadmin stuff, 
performed by people other than me.  This stuff is hard even for the 
professionals.  Their advantage is that they pay employees, so that they 
can spend more time and spend more predictable time slices on it.

>
> I know how irritating it is to have to deal with the old when the new
> thing is much nicer. Everyone likes svn instead of cvs. Everyone wants
> the latest version of gcc. But the reality of running a business again
> has the bottom line of insuring current and potential customer
> satisfaction, not producing the best and latest software.
>   

This isn't a business, and a focus on "customer satisfaction" is 
predicated on payment to customer support people.

> Perhaps there should be a small charge associated with support requests?
>   

Eventually we will have paid staff, but it's not a trivial move to 
make.  I certainly wouldn't recommend doing it now, in the midst of 
other concerns in the spotlight.

> And when costs for setup
> balloon into the thousands with no immediate benefits, then it is not
> a co-op either.

I don't know what world you're living in, but I bet _most_ non-profit 
corporations have multi-thousand-dollar ramp-up investments that don't 
bring immediate benefits.  If the amount bothers you, don't worry; as 
before, I offer to pay it all myself in the worst case, though I don't 
expect that to happen.