[occupyaustin-it] occupyaustin-it Digest, Vol 2, Issue 66

Fri Nov 18 15:49:38 CST 2011

Couldn't have said it better myself man. 

Bernardino "Lucian" Villaseñor
Workers Defense Project | Intern 
UT Austin | Mexican-American Studies
Office: (512) 391-2305
Cell: (210) 262-3422

________________________________
 From: Boyd Carter <boydcarter at gmail.com>
To: #OccupyAustin Information Technology & Communications Infrastructure Team <occupyaustin-it at foojutsu.org> 
Sent: Friday, November 18, 2011 3:21 PM
Subject: Re: [occupyaustin-it] occupyaustin-it Digest, Vol 2, Issue 66

A few points.  My perspective, No one else. I sincerely hope we can move forward on Saturday and that Anton will work with us to solve the problems.

BUT...

1) Anton doesn't trust anyone who hasn't been down to city hall (his words), which is irrational.  There are many valid reasons one might not feel comfortable there. We have a safe, secure space for nerd work and he has yet to show up there, or engage the IT group for help aside from ranting, sometimes on livestream, that no one with the skills needed will help him.  This is a LIE.  He has done this, in public, after repeated attempts by the IT group (myself and Greg and others via phone, in person, attending HIS meetings.. anyway we could get ahold of him) to offer any and all help he needs.

2) Anton has thus far refused to participate in peer-reviewed management of the service as a whole, demonstrating a disdain for consensus driven work among a group of peers which is antithetical to the movement.

3) Anton is protecting "cpanel" level access because we are on a shared host with other, professional paid clients of his. We aren't asking for root. He is the sole admin for the namespace, file level admin, email addresses, email distribution lists, etc. This is a single point of failure, and an enormous problem.  This is NOT about whose name is on the registrar account or whose name is on the bill for the hosting.  I could give a flip.  Administration of the namespace and services, and administration of the registrar and accounts are two DIFFERENT issues. Don't get it twisted.

4) Anton has required payment for hosting services thus far on same shared host with other, for profit paying clients.  Who is paying for what here?  Anton was content to let occupyaustin.org GO DARK (no web, no email, no nothing) yesterday due to lack of funds from OA after admitting that it wasn't about the money and that he had the funds to pay the bill!!!!

5) The funds Anton has requested (and will be a recurring bill, according to Anton yesterday) far exceed the unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth managed hosting we've been able to get DONATED for other projects.  Can Occupy Austin funds be better used? I think so.

6) Anton has a knack for calling out others commitment and motives in respect to physical presence and ideological backgrounds while consistently threatening to leave Occupy Austin and threatening to depart from the city of Austin entirely. At least 4 times by my count, officially, that I have witnessed.  Anton's commitment to Occupy Austin is demonstrably absent.  

I've tried to keep it factual, but these are the problems we have.  I hope we can work them out.

Lastly, I will say this.  As CTO of occupyradio.fm and other related national/meta non-profit services, I will not have Anton on any team I work with or organize.  This is purely a reactive, firefighting exercise and a waste of time.

Thanks,
Boyd

P.S. Greg asked that the issue be tabled while I was drafting this.  I agree, but I had this in the pipeline and I'm sending it.  I'm leaning on his diplomacy to help us work this out from here on, as we all should.  In a CONSENSUS DRIVEN PROCESS.  Enough about Anton.  The facts are known. Lets solve the problem.

On Fri, Nov 18, 2011 at 2:27 PM, Joe Cooper <swelljoe at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Alan Viosca <alanviosca at gmail.com>
>>
>>
>>I'm starting to have a very large problem with the way Anton is claiming
>>
ownership of the domain name and creating personal demands. I also wonder
>>
>>if creating a board of directors (not to mention the "dictatorship" he
>>holds over the domain) directly goes against the idea of horizontal
>>
leadership within OA. We've already seen this problem of ownership of
>>
>>donations with other people (if anyone was around for Joshua and his PA
>>system), and it needs to be addressed. It might not be pretty, either.
>>
>
>
>Maybe I'm missing something in this conversation...but, I'd like to point out that a lot of people have access to the entirety of the website content (myself included; I asked for access so I could upload GA minutes, and got it the next day, including the ability to update all of the pages). It's my understanding that several IT team members also have similar access. If Anton is exerting control over content, I'm unaware of it.
>
>
>I see a lot of suspicious folks acting like everyone is out to get everyone else. Damned near every working group is talking about their suspicions of damned near every other working group. I don't think this attitude is productive.
>
>
>A domain name must be owned by someone or some legal entity. I don't see how any other specific person owning the domain is better than Anton owning the domain name. What you're doing in asking Anton to hand over the domain to "IT team" is to hand it over to some single person on the IT team. He looks at that the same way you guys are looking at one guy holding the domain name: with suspicion and hesitation. His position is a reasonable one, given the demands people are making on him to hand over the domain to someone...he wants to insure that if it goes to "the group" it actually goes to an entity that legally answers to the group. Any individual on the IT team does not meet that qualification. You're saying, "I don't trust an individual to have control over the domain name. I demand that you hand the domain name over to another individual."
>
>
>If there's an issue with the website not being up to date or complete, somebody with access needs to start updating it; if the people who already have access aren't willing to do that, then someone else needs to step up and volunteer and actually do the work. There are currently 31 users with access to the website content, including several Administrator level users (some on the IT team; which means IT team members can grant access to the website content).
>
>
>Those are issues that can be solved. Don't make this into another witch hunt. I'm annoyed at the way folks handled the PA issue, too. I'm glad the PA is gone, but I don't like that people made it into a power struggle. We can have a conversation about this stuff without turning it into yet another us against them fight. We are all "us", including Anton. We're better than that.
>_______________________________________________
>occupyaustin-it mailing list
>occupyaustin-it at foojutsu.org
>http://foojutsu.org/mailman/listinfo/occupyaustin-it
>
>

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