CARES

["p. buxton" <somercet@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello, all. Peter Buxton here. I'm not likely to be at ANY future meetings, 
as I just accepted a (really good) job that runs second shift :( but I do 
wish to declare my intent of remaining a current member of KLUG, AND...

(we might wish to move this to private mail once people have responded)

I've been volunteering at CARES, Community AIDS Resource and Education 
Services, here in Kalamazoo (I've been adding users, keeping backups 
current, &c.) They have: about 12 Win95/98 workstations, 1 Netware 4.11 
server (Compaq, DAT tape, SCSI-2, lotsa mem, not much else known), ISDN 
through WMIS, a bunch of repeaters and hubs in the basement, networked HP 
printers, faxserver and tape backup on the server, shared files, and 
Groupwise mail.

Bob Brown (pre-election) and I looked this over and and proposed to replace 
the whole shebang with Linux. (ATW suggested three Linux boxen: one web 
server, one firewall, one everything else server; my feeling is that this is 
an unsophisticated, cash-poor non-profit and we should install the latter 
two but take the standard ISP web hosting as a welcome freebie. But more on 
this later.)

Anyway, Dirk, Bob and I were mailing each other about it, and I asked if we 
would charge a fee. After a few exchanges, I realized that this is kind of 
silly, and a bit unfair to Dirk. After all, the treasurer should be in on it 
as well, as well as those people besides myself who will volunteer to work 
on CARES--they're doing the work, they should have a voice in what they 
think KLUG should (or should not!) charge for member time.

(Our only other KLUG model for this is Boogies, but Boogies is a for-profit 
business, and very different from CARES. Boogies pays not only for the 
hardware we purchase and install (as would CARES) but also the maintenance 
we provide on a profit-raising system. On the other hand, to charge nothing 
would seem to invite abuse, if not from CARES then from other organizations 
we might help in the future.)

So, here's the question: who, experienced or not, wishes to help, and (what) 
should we charge?
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