ResourcesUsagePolicy

The Resource Usage Policy

Purpose

This document details how resources owned by eglug.org shall be used and what are the rights of the members in relation to these resources.

Disclaimer

Ownership here is a social contract not legal ownership, legal ownership would typicaly be to the one who payed for the resource, in case of payment by electronic means as in credit cards legal ownership will be to the owner of the account used to pay. while this in theory may give one person power over the whole community there is no practical means to avoid this problem, trust and peer pressure are the only thing the only guarantees we could have.

At the moment all eglug.org resources are donated by Alaa, MadFarmAnimalz, Uniball, WhirlPool and ezabi, later to avoid concentrating too much power a wider group of members should contribute in paying.

Resources

The resources controlled by eglug.org are the eglug.org and eglug.net domains and and hosting space.

The details of how these resources can be used very much depends on the details of the hosting package, this policy shall change everytime the hosting provider or package changes.

As of the time of writing this version (5th of June 2004) the resources can be distributed as:

1. Webspace (we have around 600MB).
2. FTPspace (shared with webspace).
3. eglug.org/net Subdomains (sharing storage with webspace).
4. unlimited eglug.org/net Subdomain redirects.
5. eglug.org/net POP or IMAP email boxes (shares space with webspace).
6. unlimited eglug.org/net email forwarding addresses.
7. 20GB of bandwidth per month.
8. 5 mailing lists.
9. The core eglug.org space and the drupal installation.
10. Blogs under the drupal installation.

Policy

Administrators are responsible for maintaining and allocating these resources as described in the charter.

Only Administratos hold the passwords to all resources, abuse of these resurces will be considred violation of their mandate.

The community shall work hard to ensure that changes in this policy are for better distribution and more access to members, changes to less resources or more restrictive usage shall only happen when it is extremly nessecary.

In case of running out of resources administrators will investigate if one area or person is using excess amounts of resources, or if some resources are allocated to an unactive area, if no resource waste is found this will b taken to mean the community has grown enough to justify acquiring new resources.

Resource Distribution

1. Main purpose of the webspace is to serve the core eglug.org website.
2. Due to the unsecure nature of FTP, FTP space will be allocated for anonymous access to Free/Open Source Software related packages developed as part of eglug.org activities.
   • it must be realised that in most cases a LUG is not the correct place to host files.
3. All moderators and Administrators will be granted eglug.org email boxes.
   • the boxes are to remain valid as long as the owner is still considered a member of EGLUG.
   • mailbox quota may be changed by administrators according to circumstances as long as they provide adequate notice.
4. All Senior members get an eglug.org forward address.
   • The addresses remain valid as long as the owner is considered a member of EGLUG
5. Members are enocuraged to use their eglug.org emails in all matters relating to eglug.org, they're of course free to use it for personal uses.
6. Upon request moderators can have a limited space and a subdomain for personal use.
   • The subdomain will be fashioned after the members nick in the eglug.org website.
   • All rules applying to blogs apply to these personal spaces.
   • Administrators may at any point anounce they can no longer grant such requests, they're not however to pick and choose between requests, requests are honored on a first come first serve basis.
7. Upon request senior users and moderators can have space and a subdomain for use in their personal Free/Open Source related projects as long as the project does not fit another section of the eglug.org website.
   • This space is then considered a strictly in topic space, while moderators cannot access and moderate these personal spaces failure to comply with the AcceptableUsePolicy will lead to the suspension of the space.
   • A visible link to this project will be provided in the eglug.org website.
   • Administrators may at any point anounce they can no longer grant such requests, they're not however to pick and choose between requests, requests are honored on a first come first server basis.
8. All senior members and above are granted blogs on the eglug.org website and a limited image gallery to use as they see fit.

The rest of the resources are to be used by the administrators to server the needs of the community, Administrators are required to utilize these resources to implement any features or ideas the community agrees on.

we should add language to describe a formal process for collecting money for annual payments.

we should also add language to describe a formal process for dealing with running out of resources.

we should also add language to the effect that hosting provider should not be changed except under very extreme conditions to minimize dns instability and the pain of migrating emails boxes and stuff like that.

cheers, Alaa