Imminent Death of BayLISA / July Board Meeting Invitation

Wed Jun 16 12:52:40 PDT 2004

> So, other backup speakers, if you have TWiki access please create an
> entry with your canned blurb.  Do keep in mind that it should be for
> a talk that you already have at least 50% prepared!

That reminds me: We should (there's that word) open up the TWiki to all 
members, if not the entire Internet (read for the latter, read/write for 
members?).  Members means ... A database!  And passwords!  The cobblers 
children have gone into the f*cking NAVY and become f*cking ADMIRALS and 
still have no shoes!  (Sorry.  I can shout because I'm one of the proximate 
causes of this being so bad; although I'm also the one who get it as far as 
it is.)

Who within the sound of my voice would like to volunteer to do this, once 
and for all?  We'll give you a shell and sudo and turn you loose.  (We? I 
guess the board should approve it, but I'll bet they will.)  We have a 
bunch of OpenLDAP-based crap I came up with; it should be in MySQL instead, 
and should tie into the Apache for Basic-Auth, which is how TWiki likes 
things.  Let there be PHP, or Python, or whatever.  In the current thing, 
only board members can edit a member's paid-until ("expiration" sounds bad) 
date, and there's a record of who edited what; not to mention editing who's 
considered "board"; those should be preserved.  It should email renewal 
reminders (the primary objective), password reminders on demand, and permit 
online payment of fees.  With a credit card. (See www.authorize.net, which 
I use elsewhere.)  From the meeting, if anyone there has a connected 
browser.

It's 2004.  How hard can this be these days?  Who can resist the challenge?

I'd tackle it, but it frankly needs a fresh perspective, and someone with 
knowledge of -- yes! -- commercial products that we could simply _buy_, 
within reason.  There are a few bucks left in the treasury (right?) and 
this would probably get enough board votes for a modest (<$1k) price. 
Should run on Solaris, but a Linux box could be spontaneously generated to 
run this instead.  (And IMAP Partners, LLC, will continue to donate co-lo 
space, if it replaces the Solaris box.)

One more thought: structure it so you could outsource this to $GROUPNAME et 
al, pro-bono or cost-recovery.  Be sure someone else hasn't already done 
this, first.