14:05:11 <pronovic> #startmeeting
14:05:11 <hcoop-meetbot> Meeting started Sat Nov 21 14:05:11 2020 UTC.  The chair is pronovic. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot.
14:05:11 <hcoop-meetbot> Useful Commands: #action #agreed #help #info #idea #link #topic.
14:05:17 <pronovic> #topic attendance
14:05:24 <pronovic> if you are an hcoop member and present please write "#info $hcoop_username"
14:05:29 <pronovic> #info pronovic
14:05:30 <keverets> #info keverets
14:05:34 <unknown_lamer> #info clinton
14:05:46 <bkhl> #info bkhl
14:05:58 <pronovic> #topic agenda
14:06:06 <pronovic> The agenda is found here: https://wiki.hcoop.net/IrcMeetings/20201121
14:06:14 <pronovic> #info https://wiki.hcoop.net/IrcMeetings/20201121
14:06:27 <pronovic> #topic Approve the financial reserve policy recommended in August
14:06:45 <pronovic> For the first time in a long while, co-op has money available in excess of what is needed to pay expenses, and we want to make sure
14:06:51 <pronovic> adopt this policy today, after taking any addit
14:06:57 <pronovic> (Sorry, the formatting on that was terrible)
14:07:05 <pronovic> #info https://wiki.hcoop.net/ExpensesPolicy
14:07:11 <pronovic> #info https://wiki.hcoop.net/FinancialReservePolicy
14:07:17 <pronovic> #info https://wiki.hcoop.net/HcoopBudget
14:07:42 <pronovic> Is there any discussion before the board approves the recommended financial reserve policy?
14:08:04 <pronovic> There was not any discussion from members in hcoop-discuss, as far as I recall.  I did not receive any private communication.
14:08:23 <unknown_lamer> I think given that no one had any input on -discuss we've discussed it enough, and I'm in favor of adopting as written
14:08:59 <pronovic> I agree.  Anyone want to give us a motion?
14:09:56 <pronovic> Or I can do it?  I move that we approve the financial reserve policy recommended in August.
14:10:04 <unknown_lamer> second
14:10:14 <pronovic> #vote Approve the financial reserve policy recommended in August
14:10:16 <pronovic> +1
14:10:24 <pronovic> #info +1
14:10:25 <unknown_lamer> #info +1
14:10:32 <keverets> #info +1
14:10:39 <bkhl> #info +1
14:11:01 <pronovic> #agreed the board approves the financial reserve policy recommended in August
14:11:12 <pronovic> #topic Formal board decision on the question of selling hcoop.org
14:11:19 <pronovic> Back in late October, we got a request to sell the hcoop.org domain.  We do own
14:11:25 <pronovic> At the time, the board discussed this in email. Both Clinton and I thought the
14:11:31 <pronovic> information.  But, it's now been a month
14:11:37 <pronovic> Is there agreement that we should not sell the domain?
14:11:43 <pronovic> Is there any agreement on whether (and how) we should reply to the request.
14:12:04 <unknown_lamer> I did not respond to the person who inquired (can try to do so later today through gandi if we can do that due to being bogged down a lot recently, but I think we should hold onto the domain
14:12:42 <pronovic> I agree that we should hold onto the domain.  I'm ambivalent about replying, since the request didn't seem all that legitimate.
14:13:00 <unknown_lamer> considering we're a not-for-profit in addition to a network services provider and all, and have owned the domain forever
14:13:10 <bkhl> I don't think we are obliged to reply.
14:13:16 <unknown_lamer> works for me
14:13:41 <pronovic> ok, I guess I'll just make it a formal vote, so we have a record of it
14:13:47 <keverets> should we redirect it to the actual domain?
14:14:41 <pronovic> Back in October, I think we said that it would be worth eventually using the domain, but didn't set a timeline
14:14:42 <unknown_lamer> probably, but that's more of a technical decision. we'll want letsencrypt support first (no reason to pay for the domain just to 301 to hcoop.net imo)
14:14:49 <pronovic> yes, true
14:14:59 <bkhl> We should if it's not too much bother.
14:15:29 <unknown_lamer> I cna plan to as soon as we have LE support in domtool
14:16:02 <pronovic> ok, I move that we keep the hcoop.org domain, enable it to redirect to hcoop.net once letsencrypt support is available in domtool, and that we not reply to the original request
14:16:11 <bkhl> second
14:16:24 <pronovic> #vote keep the hcoop.org domain, enable it to redirect to hcoop.net once letsencrypt support is available in domtool, and not reply to the original request
14:16:30 <pronovic> #info +1
14:16:36 <keverets> #info +1
14:16:42 <bkhl> #info +1
14:16:48 <unknown_lamer> #info _+1
14:16:54 <unknown_lamer> probably a few more months (should be getting back on track in general soon, have dealt with most of my health gunk except for removing a rotten tooth which is being done late dec depending on the pandemic)
14:17:00 <pronovic> I think that's fine.  There's no particular rush.
14:17:15 <pronovic> #agreed keep hcoop.org and eventually use it
14:17:25 <unknown_lamer> except for browsers defaulting to https everywhere
14:17:31 <pronovic> #topic Sales tax discussion
14:17:43 <pronovic> I'm following up on something that came up back in June, a question of whether
14:17:49 <pronovic> rationale on the official record, if there's
14:17:55 <unknown_lamer> gonna have to solve this generally soonish thanks to the march of time
14:18:11 <pronovic> From what I've read, there are two kinds of sales-tax schemes: origin-based and
14:18:17 <pronovic> is "consuming" resources (such as network
14:18:23 <pronovic> members
14:18:29 <unknown_lamer> we might be exempt from paying sales tax but it wasn't clear to me
14:19:00 <pronovic> For today, I either want to get agreement on the rationale above, or make a decision about what additional research/consultation is required
14:19:59 <unknown_lamer> afaik we're in a jurisdiction where we don't have to charge (and definitely not doing enough business in any state to have to charge on behalf of members), but as far as paying sales tax on our hosting as DO as now started charging us, I don't know if it is worth checking into if we are exempt
14:20:38 <pronovic> Ah, I see.  There's two questions then - whether we need to charge members sales tax, and whether we want to engage Digital Ocean about them charging the co-op sales tax.
14:21:23 <pronovic> We may not need a vote on this at all.
14:21:32 <unknown_lamer> at our scale I don't think the few bucks per months sales tax is more than an annoyance, if we were even exempt (wasn't able to figure that out). never hurts really to pay a bit extra in taxes
14:21:45 <unknown_lamer> can't get in trouble that way
14:22:07 <bkhl> What percentage are we talking about?
14:22:23 <bkhl> 6 % I see
14:23:04 <pronovic> I would be ok with the status quo
14:24:00 <bkhl> I'm alright with it that I'm not personally going to start researching US tax law.
14:24:06 <unknown_lamer> fine by me for now, if we can determine that we're exempt that would be nice but 6% right now isn't too bad
14:24:25 <bkhl> So let's just say if someone is keen enough to save us that money they can do the research and bring it up again?
14:24:31 <pronovic> sure.  do we need a vote at all then?  or is it enough that we've discussed this?
14:25:07 <unknown_lamer> I think keeping the status quo is fine and doesn't need a vote, just keep paying our bills as-is since everything is within the budget we already set
14:25:12 <keverets> bkhl: pretty sure we won't save money. If anything, we'd have to pass the sales tax on to the members (so we'd pay it anyway) and add accounting overhead
14:25:18 <pronovic> yeah
14:26:15 <pronovic> all right, seems like we can just move onto other business then
14:26:20 <pronovic> #topic other business
14:26:49 <pronovic> Any member of the co-op is welcome to bring up a topic here
14:27:03 <unknown_lamer> none from me, other than that i am almost done dealing with getting the ol' body working normally again
14:27:16 <keverets> What's the status of our off-site backup? Did we stop paying rsync.net?
14:27:40 <unknown_lamer> we stopped paying them a while ago, we have no offsite backup right now
14:28:22 <keverets> OK. Is there anything we want to do about that risk?
14:28:30 <unknown_lamer> probably #1 priority behind finishing buster upgrades (just in time for bullseye to release...)
14:29:03 <keverets> ok, so budget approval for whatever the proposal is at that time, then? Or does that fit into existing mechanisms?
14:29:15 <bkhl> I move that we update the member manual backups page to be accurate. :-)
14:29:21 <unknown_lamer> thinking that we should set up restic backups and sync to backblaze b2 but have not found time to work on that
14:29:52 <bkhl> https://wiki.hcoop.net/MemberManual/Backups
14:30:28 <pronovic> true, that last line should probably just be removed
14:30:34 <unknown_lamer> just need to axe the offsite section
14:30:54 <keverets> or note that there's currently none, but there are plans to implement one soon(ish)
14:31:00 <unknown_lamer> we do still make a daily backup of afs and a week's worth of dailies of postgres/mysql, onsite
14:31:25 <pronovic> that sounds like an easy task.  who's going to take it?
14:31:37 <bkhl> I removed it already.
14:31:43 <pronovic> great
14:31:51 <pronovic> any other discussion on this topic?
14:31:58 <keverets> none from me
14:32:33 <unknown_lamer> that's it from me. just need to find energy to actually get offsite backups working again in a useful form
14:32:57 <pronovic> ok.  hope you feel better.  I had a summer like that a few years back.  It will feel nice when you're back on your feet.
14:33:28 <unknown_lamer> mostly back now. pretty amazing how a tiny dose of modern medicine can fix things like totally out of whack blood pressure
14:33:34 <pronovic> definitely!
14:33:48 <pronovic> if there's no other business, I'll end the meeting.  any objections?
14:33:54 <keverets> sounds good
14:34:00 <bkhl> Just one thing
14:34:06 <pronovic> sure
14:34:16 <bkhl> unknown_lamer: would you like us to do something to spread out any of the tasks you have mentioned?
14:34:40 <bkhl> Is it a question of mentoring someone into helping being more bother than doing it yourself?
14:35:02 <unknown_lamer> on the sysadmin side day to day is pretty handled now
14:35:17 <unknown_lamer> docelic has been dealing with almost all normal support requests
14:35:23 <pronovic> seems like the big effort stuff is in developing new resources, like backups or letsencrypt in domtool?
14:35:29 <pronovic> vs. day-to-day?
14:36:07 <unknown_lamer> there's a task list on the wiki and i am willing to help get anyone up to speed
14:36:34 <pronovic> if you don't mind, let's put the link to that task list here in the minutes
14:36:45 <pronovic> and I'll publicize it when we publish the minutes to the members
14:36:51 <unknown_lamer> but there are still things to be done to make it easier for folks to contribute. we got halfway to making domtool hacking accessible with smichel17[m] a couple of years ago, but stalled after that
14:37:28 <bkhl> I've been thinking of volunteering to join in on domtool a bit, but don't know how much I commit.
14:37:34 <unknown_lamer> https://wiki.hcoop.net/HcoopVolunteerTasks could use a bit of dusting off but generally a good start
14:37:40 <bkhl> s/commit/can commit/
14:37:46 <keverets> #link https://wiki.hcoop.net/HcoopVolunteerTasks
14:38:03 <pronovic> perfect
14:38:09 <unknown_lamer> I think as far as things anyone could do ... domtool actually giving useful error messages with invalid args is pretty big, and pretty easy
14:39:23 <pronovic> any other discussion on this?
14:39:29 <pronovic> or other topics?
14:39:35 <unknown_lamer> that's it from me
14:41:01 <pronovic> Ok, thanks everyone for attending.  It was a good discussion.  Hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend.
14:41:03 <pronovic> #endmeeting