ARPA member votes are usually called to help shape membership policies
and dues. A vote will usually stem from a discussion on the BBOARD if
the topic seems like a worthwhile voting topic. Votes are handled
through the 'vote' command.
1994 SUSTAINING MEMBERSHIP DUES (pre-ARPA)
A meeting was held at The Great Outdoors sandwich shop at Preston RD
in Dallas. There were 10 SDF members in attendance. There an idea
was proposed to create an SDF Membership to help with operational
costs. Prior to this, donating to SDF was purely voluntary. In order
to make the membership desirable, it was discussed and decided that
the 'ARPA Network Services' be a premium and available to SDF members
that supported SDF. A vote was called on the system to set the dues
at $5/month.
1996 ARPA MEMBERSHIP DUES REVIEW
A meeting was held at Pasand Indian Restaurant at Coit Rd and Campbell RD
in Richardson. There were 16 SDF members in attendance. The group
proposed a review of the ARPA membership dues as there was only 1 or
2 people paying the monthly dues. A discounted schedule was proposed
and later voted on SDF to have the following dues schedule:
It was also noted that ARPA membership would allow SLIP/PPP via SDF's
dialup numbers as well as an IRC BOT process.
1998 ARPA MEMBERSHIP REVIEW AND SUPPLEMENTAL MEMBERSHIPS
In order to make the membership dues easier to pay, it was proposed
that it become a one time 'initiation fee'. It was then discussed what
would be considered an appropriate one time initiation fee. A survey
was run on the system with roughly 200 responses with ranges between
$200 - $10. It was decided that the intiation fee for SDF ARPA
membership would be set at $36 so that it would be large enough so
people would take the membership seriously, but still affordable and
not a financial burden. Also a vote was taken on new supplemental
memberships with specific features for ARPA members. These supplemental
features would help with operational costs:
users - free
arpa - $36 one time
100mb home, 100mb web, 100mb mail
telnet, ssh, ftp, ytalk, irc, snarf,
gcc, g++, perl, python, ruby, php
dns - $20 a year
domain name service for an internet domain name
vhost - $14 a month
webhosting for your domain
dns, vpm and a private http log
server - $20 a month
ability to run a server (talker, mud, bbs)
background process on a private server
access to crontab
robot - $10 a month
ability to run an IRC bot
background process on a private server
access to crontab
tweak - $20 a year
ability to customise and increase your quota
vpm - $20 a year
20 'virtual pop3' mailboxes
2003 METAARPA MEMBERSHIP
MetaARPA was proposed as a sustaining membership and a tier above the
one time ARPA membership. This membership was designed to allow for
IRC bots and server processes which were previously their own
memberships. MetaARPA would also have advanced programming privileges
to languages such as lisp, java and other CPU / memory intensive
systems which would be run on dedicated MetaARPA-only servers. Software
collaboration was also made available with the addition of individual
member groups, as well as a shared bin directory which could be made
available to all SDF users.
MetaARPA - $36 a year
- MetaARPA only server
- crontab (mkcron) and background processes (screen)
- access to advanced programming languages (lisp, java, squeak)
- shared public bin dir (/sys/sdf/bin)
- user collaboration (setgrp)
