Minutes of the National Capital FreeNet Board of Directors Meeting held on 29 April, 1993 in the Room 1A, Ottawa Public Library Ottawa, Canada 1. Board members in attendance: David Sutherland Chairman Andrew Patrick First Vice President John Ferguson Second Vice President Robert Pless Stephen Toy Al Seaman Tony Smyth Jean Wilmot Treasurer Richard Taylor David Blackwood 2. Others in attendance: David Hughes Secretary John Morgan Jocelyn Ferguson Cheryl McJannet Julie Chahal 3. The meeting was called to order at 7:05 PM by David Sutherland Chairman. MINUTES OF THE PERVIOUS MEETING 4. John Ferguson moved that the minutes of the previous meeting be approved, this was seconded by Richard Taylor and passed unanimously. COMMITTEE REPORTS 5. Public Access Committee: Stephen Toy stated that the committee has been in touch with Bell Canada about the introduction of terminals in public locations and that the Nepean Public Library was now on line. He then introduced Julie Chahal who made a presentation on the priorities of the public access committee, a copy of the presentation is attached. Andrew Patrick moved that the priorities be accepted as outlined, it was seconded by Tony Smyth and passed by the board. 6. Ways and Means Committee: John Morgan, the committee chairman, gave a short update on the status of the committee stating that an application for FreeNet logo registration had been submitted and we should soon hear from Revenue Canada about our charitable status shortly. John asked that FreeNet establish a policy on fundraising limiting solicitation preferably to charitable organizations only, in their own menu areas and that only the NCF Corporation be allowed to solicit by Email. The board agreed and suggested that the committee draft and post the policy. David Sutherland briefly outlined the proposal submitted to the Provincial government stating that confirmation of funding was expected in late May or June. 7. Hardware and Software Committee: Andrew Patrick presented a situation report on the committees progress. A copy of this report is attached. MOTIONS 8. The following motions were made by Andrew Patrick and voted on by the board: a. That the User Agreement be revised to include the following point: All registered users of the National Capital FreeNet must provide accurate information on their applications forms. Pseudonyms or "handles" are not permissible. Failure to provide accurate information may result in denial of system access. It was seconded by John Ferguson and passed with one opposed. b. That the User Agreement be revised to include the following clause: The National Capital FreeNet prohibits direct and 'broadcast' commercial advertising. This was seconded by Al Seaman and passed by the board. c. That the NCF install the Internet Relay Chat software, but restrict interactions to the local NCF computer. This will allow NCF users to chat with each other, but not with the entire IRC community. To be implemented on a trial basis during non primetime hours (weekdays between 0100 and 1600 hours). It was seconded by John Ferguson and passed with one abstaintion. d. The NCF create two Board of Directors newsgroups (moderated and unmoderated) for public discussion of issues before the board. This was seconded by Richard Taylor and passed by the board. PHONE LINES 9. David Sutherland moved that FreeNet increase the number of phone lines and that since new modems would be required the corporation should purchase 14,4 Kbaud units since the costs are comparable to lower speed devices. After discussion the motion was amended to permit expansion to the limit of the current server (58 phone lines) and allow low speed users to flow into the high speed modem pool. It was seconded by David Blackwood and passed by the board. TREASURES REPORT 10. Jean Wilmot stated that the Corporation had $32,000 in the bank with bills for the terminal server ($10,000) and telephone lines outstanding. ADJOURNMENT 11. Dave Sutherland moved that the meeting be adjourned, it was seconded by John Ferguson and the meeting was adjourned at 9:20 PM. ATTACHMENTS Priorities of the Public Access Committee as presented by Julie Chahal Public access terminals are a key element to meeting the National Capital FreeNet's objective to meet the present information needs of the people and public agencies in the region, and to prepare the community for full and broadly based participation in rapidly changing communication environments. They ensure that the Freenet is available to anyone interested, including those who may not own a home computer with a modem. Any host organization or individual is free to make a terminal available to others at their own initiative and expense. A role of the Public Access Sub-committee is to promote the availability of terminals to the general public. A limited number of terminals, modems, and telephone lines have been donated for this purpose. Priorities for allocating this equipment are set considering the following criteria: - consistency of the objectives of the host organization with those of Freenet; - volumes of potential users that can be served; - enthusiasm and support offered by the host organization; - proximity of other terminals in the geographical area. On this basis, the Public Access Sub-Committee will solicit cooperation and install donated equipment in the following order of priority: 1. public libraries 2. local government offices: RMOC headquarters, city halls 3. educational centres, where accessible to the general public as well as students 4. hospitals - probably in the main lobby 5. community health and resource centres 6. community recreational facilities: sportsplexes, arenas, community centres, seniors' centres 7. non-profit organizations that serve the community In parallel with the above priorities, the Public Access Sub-Committee will actively encourage other organizations to make terminals available to the public at their own expense. Unallocated donated equipment might be offered for a trial period not to exceed three months. Priorities for members of the Sub-Committee to approach organizations to encourage them to make terminals available and possibly to help them find sponsors. ------------ Status of Hardware/Software Issues Andrew Patrick April 24 1993 Day-to-Day Administration I continue to be very busy with administration duties. These routine items are leaving little time for problem solving and implementation of desirable features. Many of the duties, such as fixing user names and lost passwords, creating SIGs, updating the "message of the day", routine menu maintenance, etc. should be handled by office staff. These jobs do, however, require "root" access and some advanced knowledge of the NCF system, but a long-term staff person could be trained in a short time. Software Volunteers ------------------- The recruitment and coordination of software volunteers is turning out to be an interesting and frustrating task. Many people have volunteered to help with the FreeNet software, but few have the skills in C and Unix that are required. Those that do have the skills are often unwilling to take on the "routine" bug fixes and problem solving that is required. Those that do take on tasks, such as a better newsreader or an implementation of the VI editor, fail to produce any results after repeated "'reminders". The few individuals who have the combination of skills and time have so far spent most of their efforts attempting to build esoteric tools rather than produce anything of value. I am continuing to look for volunteers who have the needed combination skills, time, and motivation XYZ Modem Protocols ------------------- XYZmodem are still broken (especially for uploading). I have tried two different versions of this software. The problem may be due to the terminal server we are using or be related to system load and response times. I have recruited two volunteers to look at this problem. French Character Support ------------------------ Initial testing has shown that French characters can be displayed if the user has Latin 1 support in their communications program or terminal. Some research was done on de-accenting characters for people who cannot display the accents, but this may not be possible. Current plan is to implement French characters for Latin 1 only. Users will have to have Latin 1 support in order to do French. If not, the French material will be garbled. We are hoping to freely distribute communications programs with Latin 1 support for DOS very soon, and MAC in the near future. MS Windows already has Latin 1 support. Users who wish to use other communications programs and are on other platforms will not be supported initially, but may be able to develop their own support for Latin 1 (e.g., Atari). Some menus and information files have been translated, and these will be used for the initial tests. All the FreeNet programs will have to be re-written to include the French material. This should be part of a major re-write that brings all the text material in programs out to text files where they can be easily translated and modified. This will be a very big job. I think I have convinced someone to take the lead on the technical implementation of French character support. Online Registration ------------------- This will be implemented as soon as I can get some time to work on it. Vote Software ------------- A volunteer has started to look at implementing the "vote" software. This software allows users to vote on issues or opinion poll items, and may be an interesting feature. We may also find it useful for making informed Board decisions.