Discussion and poll: Donations

[Joos]

I'd be more than happy to donate $25 to help make that possible.

[indio]

rofl

I'd buy that for a dollar.

[Mikayla]

Zic has asked me to throw my input into this thread, so I will, but not until tomorrow. Ciao!

[Mikayla]

To repeat what I have said in the past on this subject:

Currently, “ALFA” does not have a legal existence. ALFA cannot own anything, hold money, or enter into contracts or other legally binding agreements. There is no “ALFA” so far as the law in concerned. If someone donates money to “ALFA” at this point, what they are really doing is just giving money to whomever they sent it to. Similarly, say ALFA-member Able receives money from ALFA-member Buddy to buy a server for ALFA. Once that money is given, Able can do with it what he likes. If Able buys a server with it, that server belongs to Able, not ALFA or Buddy. Now, Buddy can individually contract with Able to provide a server for ALFA – but that is between the two of them and said contracting must take place before the money is donated. In short, Able has to promise to Buddy to use the money in a certain way. Even then, final ownership of the server is not settled unless they specify it in the contract. Regardless, that is between them – there is no “ALFA” involved because ALFA does not have a legal existence.

Now, in the United States, ALFA could incorporate as a 501(c)7 non-profit corporation. This type of non-profit corporation is for hobby and sports groups – your typical bowling league or softball team is probably a 501(c)7 non-profit corporation. To create a non-profit corporation you must incorporate, for which there is a nominal cost (I don’t remember how much, but not much). You must have a President, a Secretary and a Treasurer (and actually, the same person can be Secretary and Treasurer, or President and Secretary, I believe, just not President and Treasurer).

A corporation is governed by its Articles of Incorporation (which are usually kept very short and very general so as not to constrict the corporation) and its Bylaws. The Bylaws are, in ALFA-terms, the “Charter” or the “Constitution” of the corporation. They specify what the corporation is for, who runs it, how those people are selected, how changes and rules are enacted and all that good stuff – basically what the ALFA charter does now, but in somewhat greater detail.

The folks who actually run the corporation are the Board of Directors. These folks are selected through the process detailed in the Bylaws. Usually there are 5-15 of them, and often the first three are the President, Secretary and Treasurer you incorporated with. These are the corporate version of ALFA’s Admin. The Bylaws specify how many you have to have, usually by giving a range. I believe under the law the minimum is 3, but we can double check that later. So, for example, ALFA could say in its bylaws that it will have a maximum of 5 Directors (just like it does for Admin) – I think we should go a little higher personally, but for sake of argument, lets leave it at 5. Some of these folks have to be made the President, Secretary and Treasurer. Others are not – conceivably, ALFA’s structure could be say 7 board members: (1) President (ie Lead Admin); (2) Secretary; (3) Treasurer (could be Infra Admin but probably should not be since Infra Admin will be the one spending the money – best not to have the counter be the same as the spender!); (4)-(7) other board members detailed with duties similar to those of our current Player Admin, DM Admin, Tech Admin, etc.

Now, usually Board Members are never solely responsible for things – a Board would not, for example, usually say “this board member here is the Player Admin” – instead, the Board would form a subcommittee and say “these three designated Board Members form the Player Administration Subcommittee.” Said subcommittee would have a chair, and the subcommittee would then undertake whatever duties are assigned to it. Things don’t have to be set up this way, they just usually are. The reason is that everyone knows that non-profit Board Members are almost always volunteers and so they cannot be expected to handle everything, all the time – so instead, typical board structures do not make any one person responsible for an entire field of operations (exceptions being that the Treasurer is responsible for treasurer reports on the corporation’s finances, but even then, the Treasurer usually has a “Finance Committee” which can help).

Once incorporate, then ALFA exists legally. It can enter into contracts, it can buy things, it can own things, it can have bank accounts, it can do anything a normal non-profit corporation can do within the limits of the law, its Articles of Incorporation, and its Bylaws. It can also be sued – however, the big advantage for incorporating is that individuals within the corporation are shielded from personal liability for acts of the corporation. For example, say ALFA-member Angry sues ALFA; even if Angry wins, Angry cannot get to the personal assets of the board members or other members; Angry can only get to ALFA’s assets. This is called the “Corporate Veil” – it CAN be pierced, but usually only when the directors or officers of the corporation have acted outside the law.

Also, once incorporated, there are certain things ALFA must do; file tax statements (non-profits are generally tax-exempt, but you still have to file), you must hold regular board meetings, you must take minutes of those board meetings, and you must follow your own Bylaws. So long as you do that, your corporate and tax-exempt status should remain intact.

So...incorporating will change ALFA: Instead of a Charter, we will have Bylaws; Instead of the ALFA Rulebook, we will have “Policies and Procedures”; instead of Admin we will have a Board of Directors. The level of formality will go up – but so to will the level of accountability. Also, it then makes ALFA able to contract, own, buy, etc.

Now, at this point, I am not advocating for such a move – its makes a lot of sense, but there are drawbacks as well as while it provides many advantages, it also comes with greater responsibilities – however, while not advocating for it, I can safely say that I will never personally donate to a random ALFAn for the benefit of ALFA or for an ALFAn server without such an incorporation. To do so is to give that money away – now, there are a few folks in ALFA that I have known long enough that I would help them pay Dungeon Server accounts and such, but to donate a sum of money for a server? To someone who is under no legal obligation to do what I have donated the money for? No way. Call me cynical. I like rules that keeps folks honest and happy – that’s what these corporate laws were designed for.

So, if we want to take ALFA to the next level, I believe the next level is incorporation. Its not necessary or mandatory, but it is the logical path of progress if we want to go beyond what we have been and currently are.

[Stormseeker]

About $150 to inc. (was a couple of years ago when i checked).

[zicada]

Thanks Mik,

I think we might want to do another poll on the question, just to get an idea.

I personally tend to think incorporation might be a bit too much personally. I think we have a few individuals in ALFA that the majority trusts enough to be in charge of the money donated.

Ill start a new thread on this, with another poll.

[zicada]

Just thaught i'd post some calculations on hosting costs.

Without donations:

Somebody has to buy a server that can host their own module (this server can ONLY be used for NWN2 per current hosting rules): $1000

Cost per month to host: $40 (bandwith/power)

Say we have 7 modules, this would ammount to:

One time sum: $7000

Monthly: $280



With donations:

Everybody chips in for a server that can host 7 modules: $7000

Cost per month to host: $80

One time sum: $7000

Monthly: $80



In essense, what we are doing with donations, is splitting the bill on more people.

[AcadiusLost]

I'm concerned about the linear scaling you have going there:

$1000 machine, 1 module, $7000 machine, 7 modules?

I tend to think we approach diminishing returns pretty quickly- and the hosting capacity of a single ultra-highend server is 100% theoretical at this point. The math doesn't look so good if that $7000 server can't practically run more than 2 fullsize modules simultaneousely.

Additionally, chances are, individual hosts considering hosting for NWN2 are planning to use/upgrade their existing internet connections, not buy a second monthly ISP subscription to feed the server- so on both ends these estimates tend to be overly biased towards centralized hosting.

That said, from a tech perspective, centralized hosting is far and away the better option. Just want to point out the financial argument isn't as strong as it might appear.

[zicada]

I'm concerned about the linear scaling you have going there:

$1000 machine, 1 module, $7000 machine, 7 modules?

I tend to think we approach diminishing returns pretty quickly- and the hosting capacity of a single ultra-highend server is 100% theoretical at this point. The math doesn't look so good if that $7000 server can't practically run more than 2 fullsize modules simultaneousely.

Additionally, chances are, individual hosts considering hosting for NWN2 are planning to use/upgrade their existing internet connections, not buy a second monthly ISP subscription to feed the server- so on both ends these estimates tend to be overly biased towards centralized hosting.

That said, from a tech perspective, centralized hosting is far and away the better option. Just want to point out the financial argument isn't as strong as it might appear.

Well, internet connections dont really have to be upgraded. Many of the nwn1 servers really cant even be upgraded to run nwn2 well enough.

On the topic of scaling:

If you run say Highcliff and Neverwinter (OC nwn2 modules, both fairly large) on a core2duo and have each core run its own nwserver, then each core idles at around 40% cpu usage with users logged on. Cores really work exactly like processors. So a server like this really has 8 processors, where each has its own channel to their own 2GB chunk of memory. That means the memorybus is not a bottleneck. There are tools that can rewrite the nwserver2 binary slightly, so that you can have 7 copies on a server, that will allways start running on their designated core.

Really, the whole purpose of servers like these is to do what we need.

The one thing im not so sure about yet, is disk read/write. Eg, how much data does nwserver send/recieve over the pcix bus to the harddrives when users transit areas ? I seriously doubt its greater than the bandwith (320MB/sec), but its the only area of this that could be a concern IMO.

Basically, knowing that 2 nwservers can run happily in their own cores on a core2duo machine with 2gb ram, tells us alot about scalability. In our tests, the highcliff module (500mb in size) had a 180mb memoryfootprint while idle.

[indio]

Basically, knowing that 2 nwservers can run happily in their own cores on a core2duo machine with 2gb ram, tells us alot about scalability.

I'm not so sure about that conclusion.

I'm glad you're actually doing some testing and can provide some data. 500MB of module is small. ALFA mods will be on average between 1-2GB when they go live. But the real point is that the demands of the CPU are only going to be made when you've got the following criteria on the core2duo setup:

- 2x1GB mods
- 5 players on each
- Each player in a different exterior
- Each player in combat against a spellcaster
- Spawn systems running in each area
- Multiple mobs roaming the countryside
- Each mob death writing to the database

Now I don't think 50 cores are going to make any difference myself when it comes to running 5+ modules under the above criteria, and I've been using 3 separate core2duos for the past few months (an amazing CPU).

If we can do a test that shows the core2duo handles the above scenario in its stride, then we'd be in with a shot.

[ç i p h é r]

I'm very much in favor of stress testing a Core2 Duo. We have the hardware around to run 2 or more instances simultaneously and hopefully we can use the current roundup of beta modules to get more accurate data.

In the test case that Zic described, we had 2 instances running on a Core 2 Duo E6700 with 2GB RAM, and CPU utilization never broke 60% with 4 players on. It was mostly at 40% even during combat situations. I think events which generate disk writes tend to introduce CPU spikes (typically logging in or out). And as Zic pointed out at one point, we'll need to measure the bandwidth demands of NWN2 modules to help determine how much bandwidth we'll actually need.

[White Warlock]

< moved Here >

[White Warlock]

< moved Here >

[Mikayla]

Oh my god, there are so many things wrong with WW's post above I don't have time to detail them all here. For example, in California, a corporation does NOT have to have shares (thus why the California Secretary of State's website on business lists a fee for corps with shares, AND a fee for corps without shares) - San Francisco Pride, a non-profit I am president of, has no shares. Neither does the Trans-Law Center, a non-profit I helped set up. Also, though I have been President of both, not once have I ever been asked for private information such as my criminal record. And a real big one - YES corporations provide protection from lawsuits, its the whole reason they exist. True, anyone can sue you individually, but with corporate protection, unless the plaintiff can pierce the corporate veil, you can get the case against the individual dismissed - and right now, without incorporation, any ALFAn can be sued and would NOT be able to get the case summariliy dismissed as they would if this were a corporation. The corporate veil is what corp executives have hidden behind for, well, a century. Only where the plaintiff can prove the exec broke the law or violated the bylaws or something similar can they pierce the veil.

Anyway, its late here and I have to go home, so I cannot answer Whitey's post in great detail at the moment.

[Burt]

If each of the admin write "I love Burt" across their arsecheeks in permanent marker pen I shall donate the princely sum of £10. Yes, British Pound Sterling. I believe that's about a million of your US dollars.