We've decided to make this rootblog the new front page for Radix so that we can present important information to our users in a easy-to-publish format. You'll notice that all of the old links for services have been moved to the right hand side, along with a number of new items:
As always, if you have any questions/comments/insights, please mail us.
We've set up the Moveable Type web-logging system for all you aspiring bloggers out there. What's a web-log? It's an easy to use system for publishing personal or group news sites. If you would like to create a personal blog of your own or for a project of yours, please mail root.
Our new and improved Terms of Service:
We kick ass. We are generously offering you (yes you!) a fully featured, all powerful Unix account. You can do what you want, host domains, use email, program, whatever. You don't have to pay us money. You do have to be nice, not be an ingrate. Occasionally providing baked goods or nice Scotch is also a good way to have us help you when you really need something installed.
If you're not nice, we kick you off, kill your dog, steal your license plates, and give them to the Russian Mafia.
Radix is run as a co-op, the five admins share the costs and responsibilities equally.
I don't believe we've ever posted this publicly, but I thought it might be of use to someone who might want to set up a server co-op of their own.
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Root Club: A Server Cooperative
$Id: Charter.txt,v 1.3 2000/09/25 08:09:33 ferlatte Exp $
The goal of Root Club is to create a shared private server on good net
for a group of people who will share the costs of owning and running
the machine, and share in the day-to-day operation of the server.
The name Root Club was coined because everyone should be skilled
enough to have root.
Decisions will be made by consensus amongst the root members. For
this reason all members should share a generally common outlook on
administration.
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Costs:
All costs of running Root Club are to be shared equally. The price of
new capital equipment (the computers) should be split equally. If
members want to use old hardware they should either donate it to the
group or agree on a fair market value for the group to buy it at.
If the decision is made to bring on new members, the new members must
buy into the equipment pool for an amount which will make everyone's
share equal (so if 4 people buy a machine for $1000 and a new person
joins, they should buy in for $200). The new money will be
distributed amongst the existing members to offset their original
investment.
Hardware values should be depreciated at market rates.
If a member wants to leave the group, they should make a best effort
to find someone to replace them and sell their portion to the new
person. This is to avoid rising costs for the remaining members and
alleviate the remaining members from the responsibility of "buying
out" others as they leave. If a replacement can't be found, the
remaining members should buy out the depreciated value of the leaving
members share.
Upon dissolution of the club, hardware should be appraised at fair
market value and sold, with the proceeds being equally shared between
the members.
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Administration:
All members should agree on the administration policies by consensus.
These policies should be general and created mostly to maintain the
Security of the machine and the flexibility of the members.
Administrative decisions should be written down, and general
administrative procedures should be published and maintained so
everyone does things in the proper ways.
All root members should communicate all administrative activities
through email at all times. Everyone should be fully informed of
operational details.
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Resources:
Ironically, the cost of the machine itself is secondary to the network
connection. A fast (symmetric T1 or better) Internet connection for a
server is not cheap (co-location costs are $300/month at their
cheapest). Thankfully, we have friends who provide cheap co-location
service which we can use. This network service is provided as a favor
and should be treated as such. No high-bandwidth or malicious
activities should be conducted from the server(s).
Root members should act in an cooperative manner and not become
resource hogs. This includes especially disk space and
memory/processor. Remember the golden rule from kindergarten.
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Security:
The security of the server is of utmost priority. All services should
be monitored and upgraded against security issues, and clear text
passwords will not be allowed.
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Guests:
Root members are free to create "guest" (non-root-members) accounts
for friends. Members should not charge for this service, as these
accounts should be viewed as favors, which no implied guarantee of
service (beyond the root member's fervent need for access to their
mail).
Hosting basic services for guest members (virtual domains/web
pages/email) are fine, running new or resource-intensive services for
guest members is discouraged and must be OK'd by all root members.
All guests are expected to act appropriately in maintaining the
security of the machine. If a guest is deemed to be a nuisance by a
majority of other root members then their sponsor member will be asked
to remove them.
We've created this blog as a place for the admins of Radix (this machine) to share information with our users. This page will become the home page for Radix and will link to all the services provided here. Also, information and data presented by rootclub will be linked on the side.