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Pactor HF Cooperative Bylaws
Mission
To manage and grow a for profit world wide network of member HF stations
(henceforth referred to as members or stations) providing unified real time
access to the internet with transparent roaming to its user base (henceforth
users) for e-mail, weather, news, and other types of data.
Composition
The cooperative will be comprised of a group of individually owned HF stations.
All members of the cooperative share profits gathered by the cooperative and in
exchange provide service to all users who subscribe to the service without
exception. Members have voting privileges used to elect officers for the
cooperative, add/remove member stations, and modify the bylaws.
Goal
To make it easy and profitable for individual stations to join and operate in
the cooperative thus creating a large world wide seamless HF network.
Protocol
The cooperative HF network is to be a Pactor PIB only network. Pactor II and
Pactor III will be supported but only using the PIB protocol. The cooperative
will recommend that all stations use Pactor III.
Free Signal mode stations will be preferred over scanning stations. Scanning
stations will only be considered for outlying stations that are too far to
coordinate with other Free Signal stations. Scanning stations will be moved to
Free Signal as soon as possible.
Note that Free Signal provides totally seamless roaming between stations while
scanning stations require reconfiguration of the client for each station to be
used.
HF Network Name
The cooperative HF network is to be called XNet.
Requirements to Join
Stations wanting to join the cooperative must satisfy the following requirements
before they will be considered for membership. Prospect stations must:
1) be recommended by an existing member
2) provide their own radio
3) provide a PTC2net modem or a computer running Linux and a Pactor Pro modem
4) a dedicated connection to the internet with a static IP address
Note on item 3. Members using a Linux server and Pactor Pro modem will be
responsible for maintaining their own computers. The association can provide
some guidance but will not maintain the system. It is highly recommended that
members use PTC2net modems since they are much easier to install and the
association can provide exact installation and configuration documentation.
Note non-PTC2net sites have the additional requirements
1) Linux server
2) pppd server with Radius client support
3) Active maintenance of security patches to the Linux server
4) Pactor Pro modem with host firmware
Membership privileges
1) Profit sharing of fees collected by the cooperative
2) Automatic dealer of GMN's XGate and WeatherNet receiving commission on the
sale of these services
3) voting privileges
Small members will be assigned as tier 2 dealers of a pre-existing tier 1 GMN
dealer. Larger stations meeting the minimum sign up requirements and having a
dealer down line will be allowed to become GMN tier 1 dealers.
GMN tier 1 dealers have access to the network tools required to activate/delete
users from the cooperatives network.
Membership duties
Members must:
1) keep their stations on the air
2) pay for all hardware maintenance
3) pay for all utilities required to run the station
4) allow any user in good standing to use his station regardless of whether he
sign up the user or the user joined the network through another member.
5) Maintain an active internet connection with a static IP address
6) Vote on cooperative matters
7) have valid license to transmit in good standing
8) pay for all regulatory fees which pertain to their station
Vote allocation
Each member of the cooperative will be allocated exactly one vote per active
transmitter. A member with one transmitter on the network will have one vote. A
member with 2 transmitters on the network will have 2 votes, etc.
Board
The cooperative may create a board once its membership reaches sufficient
numbers to make it difficult to operate as simple democracy. The Charmin will
put forth a motion to create the board with rules for appointing members when he
sees fit and the members will vote on the resolution. If passed the board will
be created.
Officers
The cooperative shall have 3 officers active at all times. Officers are to be
elected by simple majority once a year at the beginning of the calendar year.
Following is a short description of each office. Officers must be active members
of the cooperative and initially will not be paid for their services. Once the
cooperative reaches maturity its members will vote to amend this document to
allow for financial compensation of its officers.
1) Chairman
The chairman is responsible for
a) Coordinating communication between all the members via e-mail or some other
mechanism
b) Arranging elections to vote on proposed items submitted by members
c) Adding items to the election ballots
d) overseeing disputes
e) helping new stations come on line
f) over see the coordination of frequencies to be used for Free Signal in a
specific area.
2) Treasurer
a) Collect moneys from GMN and other sources and distribute them to members
b) maintain bank account(s) for the cooperative
c) bill users directly for over time usage
3) Secretary
a) To assist the Chairman and the Treasurer as necessary
b) Maintain cooperative website
c) Answer general inquiries about membership
d) pre-qualify new member stations
Removal of an active member station
The cooperative can choose to remove an active member if 2/3 majority vote is
obtained by the constituency.
Amendments
The cooperative bylaws can be amended if amendments are approved by a 2/3
majority
Earnings
Members of the cooperative will make money from their station in 2 ways.
a) Every member in the cooperative is an XGate/WeatherNet dealer making a nice
commission selling GMN compression software to their user base. The exact
commission paid to members depends on the members negotiated agreement with GMN
or one of its dealers.
b) fees collected for HF usage split among the members of the cooperative on an
equal share basis (based on the number of transmitters).
Users wanting to purchase HF access pay a monthly fee of about $10 per month for
10 hours of air time ($120 yearly). This fee (minus administrative overhead) is split equally
among the stations in the cooperative based one share per transmitter.
Customers wanting e-mail and weather compression then purchase our GMN software
at list prices. XGate sells for $220 per year and WeatherNet is $99 per year +
the weather they download. Cooperative members selling the compression software
make an additional commission.
Customers requiring more than 10 hours of air time per month will be allowed to
purchase a second 10 hour monthly allotment for an additional $10 per month.
Under no circumstances is any user allowed to have more than 2 allotments of
time.
HF access fees are paid to members directly by the secretary of the cooperative.
Commissions on the sale of the software are paid by GMN or one of its tier 1
dealers.
Central Server
A central authentication and accounting server is required to allow global
seamless roaming of users throughout the network. The cooperative will depend on
the services of GMN for this. GMN will provide the central authentication server
which will allow each node on the network to authenticate active users
automatically. No special management or maintenance is required at the stations
end. Every user activated on the system will be able to login to every station
in the cooperative.
The GMN server maintains log files which will be used to create monthly usage
reports.
3rd Party Software
Although the cooperative network will be optimized for use by XGate and WxNet
other 3rd party applications will be allowed on the network if the following
rules are observed.
1) Only compression software which supports the Pactor PIB will be used
2) Web browsing of any type is strictly forbidden
3) The software must not required DNS lookups
4) The software must support one of the standard restricted PTC ports
5) absolutely no POP or SMTP traffic will be allowed over the network
The only software currently available which meets these criteria (in addition to
the GMN products) is Airmail in Telnet mode.
Additional software must be approved by the cooperative before it will be
allowed. 3rd party application usage will be charged at the usual HF network
access rates. No support will be provided for 3rd party applications using the
network.
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