Project and new-channel announcements should be submitted to the editor by 18:00. They may be submitted in person on channel #openprojects, sent via memoserv using "/msg memoserv send Editor [content]", or sent to email address web at openprojects dot net. All times on the news pages are in UTC.

Saturday morning has arrived without too much fanfare. User statistics for Friday were in the usual end-of-the-week doldrums at 2,815. On the other hand, at press time we had received two contributions to the operating fund, one from the extremely generous rwaters, who has contributed before, and one from the extremely thoughtful rillian, who included the 30¢ US PayPal processing fee. Thanks very much to both of you and to all of our contributors, monetary and otherwise.

Meanwhile, your editor is working on locating additional committers and testbed maintainers so that the server conversion project does not languish. If you're interested in participating in the project, please stop by channel #mistertoad.

Have a great weekend. So endeth the week.

--lilo

Welcome to Friday. Your editor has been wandering the channels a bit and plans to get to sleep a bit early this morning. He had an interesting conversation with peterm in #crossfire who commented that development seems to be running twice as fast since his project has come to OPN. It's always good to hear things are going well for our users.

Robster is back playing with the testbed servers, and they should be updated by the end of the week. We have an additional commit manager, InnerFIRE. He'll be busy initially as he moves to Montreal to take a new job, but should have good time availability thereafter. For information on the state of the server conversion project, please take a look at the topic on channel #mistertoad. If you're interested in working on the project or you're fiddling with the website changes mentioned in yesterday's news, please drop by and see us.

No new record for users today, though that's not unusual this time of week. Please consider making a contribution to the operating fund today. No major problems to report yesterday or this morning. The network goes on.

Have a great weekend!

--lilo

Happy Thursday. Thanks to our many contributors! By press time this morning we'd received contributions to the operating fund from revdiablo, Nathan Laredo, Chris Parman, Netgod Communications and earendil. Thanks also to Michael Champlain of Vtracks.Com; your second dual ethernet adapter arrived this morning.

Network announcements: SyL has started up a new channel, #tivo-newbies. It appears that #tivo has blossomed into a developer channel. The new channel will supplement that environment by giving people a place to to ask questions. Also, zanee_ announces the formation of #uranium, a development channel for a new secure linux distribution. The site is here.

Response to yesterday evening's news entry was light but positive. We'll plan to go ahead with the move toward non-profit, tax-exempt status and we will start doing the research. Your editor is told that the process takes a long time to complete. Meanwhile, in preparation for corporate sponsorship, if you are graphically gifted and you'd like to help out, please see if you can modify our page layout so that a column of sponsor logos can be added to it.

Several things to bear in mind: (1) vertical is good because it allows larger contributors to see their logo higher on the page; (2) the area where the logos appear should probably have a neutral background since some of those sponsors use rather, uh, vivid colors 8); (3) our pages are verified XHTML 1.0 Transitional and CSS1 compliant and display consistently on the Netscapes, on Mozilla, on IE, on Konqueror and others. We'd like these benefits to continue.

Please mock up a new version of at least one page to illustrate your changes on a web page under your control and drop by #mistertoad to show us what you've got. Keep it simple and thanks for your help!

After all of that earnest talk about corporate sponsorship and contributor logos, your editor wants to reiterate an important point. We are looking at this change, not to become more corporate, but to retain our current character as a community project. As a 501(c)3 corporation, we can argue persuasively for sponsorship without worrying that the focus of the network will change.

Note: If you've submitted an application to sponsor an OPN server and had it approved and the server account is sitting idle, our apologies. We'll be changing network topology, including hidden hubs, when we convert to dancer-hybrid. But we're not yet ready to make those changes, so we're holding off on assigning roles to new servers. Also, while we keep track of existing servers fairly well, we're still a bit disorganized in tracking servers being placed into service. If your server is not running yet, or was pulled due to problems and is not yet back, just stop by occasionally just to remind us that you're there. Please be patient. It will take a while to make things more organized.

Have a good morning and an excellent day.

--lilo

Good evening to all. Your editor is currently considering making a change to the organization of OPN, and could use your feedback. He is considering incorporating the network as a 501c3 (US non-profit educational institution). Doing so provides tax advantages to some contributors and should help us deliver services, as well as allowing us to consider other ways in which we can be of service to the free software / open source community.

So the first question is, What do you think? We'd like to hear from you at email address web at openprojects dot net. Is this a good idea? A profit model has never been the primary motivation behind OPN and this could help us do our job better.

The second question is, can you help? We need the benefit of your experience if you have set up a non-profit or charitable organization, in the US or elsewhere, particularly one with international ramifications. Please write and help us out with anecdotes, URL's, pointers to legal and other assistance. We can use your help and if you've been thinking of contributing to the network in some way, including the operating fund, now is a good time.

Thanks in advance for any support and assistance you can provide, and have a great evening!

--lilo

Happy Wednesday. Kudos to Joshua Uziel who, just before press time, made a contribution of $150.00 US, our largest contribution to date, giving us our first thousand dollars in the operating fund. Also, thanks go out to Michael Champlain of Vtracks.Com. One of the Thomas Conrad TCTX048 Dual Ethernet Adapters you donated arrived yesterday.

There's not much more news on the board. Yesterday saw some activity against the hubs on an infrequent basis and otherwise things were fairly quiet. Your editor would have spent more time working on the server upgrade project, but it was his first day working on a one-month contract job and, between that and sleep problems, he was a bit worn out.

Robster will try to take time this weekend to update the testbed servers and set up some realistic hubbing. Now that a number of items have been added to the TODO list, it's a good time to stop by #mistertoad and start getting to know the developers. We can use your help. Also, your editor has inserted a new TODO item (N11) to add public channel archiving. Please read this item carefully and completely and see if we've addressed privacy issues adequately, and stop by #openprojects or send an email to web at openprojects dot net to tell us what you think.

--lilo

Welcome to Tuesday. Monday was a fairly good day for network traffic; not a record day but well over 3,000 users on the Gelhausen sample. Your editor spent some time yesterday rearranging the TODO LIST for the server upgrade project and a number of new items are on the list. Welcome InnerFIRE to the commit manager list. If you've been thinking about getting involved it's probably time to go take a look. Come see us on #mistertoad.

Thanks much to lbk and Scott Yellig for their contributions to the operating fund today. Their help is much appreciated. Brad Fitz informed us that #livejournal on OPN is in fact the official Live Journal IRC channel. Brad is their lead coder, and he noted that all of the code is now GPLed, including the server, for which your editor feels they deserve a round of applause.

--lilo

Monday, slow Monday has arrived. Your editor is still sorting out his apartment and slowly getting things into gear. He spent the evening adding projects and groups to the About OPN page. If we ought to be bragging about your project and it's not on that page, please send an email to address web at openprojects dot net. It helps us with the sponsors. :)

Thanks to F. John Rowan, to Austin Hair and to starzz for their contributions, ending a brief dry spell. Everyone, please keep those contributions trickling in. Your example will help us as we continue to grow.

Things are a bit quiet on the server upgrade and banner ad contribution fronts; please stop by #mistertoad and introduce yourself if you're interested in getting involved, and as we do more testing we'll have some more items on the TODO list.

--lilo

Another week begins. Your editor spent the end of the day with his two-year-old son; frequent visitors to #openprojects will be familiar with Ben's occasional typing on that channel. The OPN web site was down for several hours today. However, there's good news; the folks at ibiblio have upgraded their web server to a rather hefty Linux box with a terabyte disk farm. As a result, your editor's new logging program will actually compile and run with ease in the hosting environment and a bit more information on web site activity will now be available in realtime.

As of press time, guerrilla informs us that OPN has been listed on the dmoz open directory project under Computers Internet Chat IRC Networks and should appear sometime in the next 12 hours, as well as to downstream users of the data whenever they update.

Your editor is currently in the process of looking through the materials for his new research job; it's a one month contract and a bit more involved than he had originally thought, but he's hoping to have more time for the network in between work and travel.

Welcome to your week!

--lilo

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Current network date and approximate time: Friday, 14-Jun-2002 23:44:58 GMT.
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