Staff Meeting Summary
November 5, 2011
The SWGEmu Staff
We met on Saturday, November 5th at 2:00 pm EDT to discuss three topics.
First, SWGEmu is now an officially, globally recognized 501(c) Non-Profit Organization registered by Oru in Hungary. The cost to do this was $1,500. The estimated monthly accounting and paperwork fee is $250/month but after the first month or two we will look to do that ourselves or find cheaper solutions. We now have financial protection from taxes as well as possible legal protection by not turning SWGEmu into a money making company. In the future, the other Founders and possibly some of the Leaders will be brought on to the NPO Board but for time and cost reasons it is just Oru right now.
Second, with the NPO complete we will begin monthly financial reports of donations and expenses. We will get into more detail with a separate report but right now we are averaging approximately $1,643/month from an average of 53 donations/month. We now have a total of five servers we operate costing just over $900/month - detail of the five servers in next topic. Some non-monthly bills are used for hardware upgrades and of course recently the NPO expense. The current cash balance on hand is approximately $6,500.
Third was a discussion on setting up the separate Development Site and the server setup. It is easiest to quote Oru from the meeting to describe the separate Development Site:[14:51] <@oru> so to sum it up, the development team wanted a visual split in the eye of the community to become a development only project
[14:52] <@oru> it would mean separate forums in the first place, which will hopefully be created soon
[14:52] <@oru> there were also discussions to have another irc server but there was no final word on that
[14:53] <@oru> so what we are going to have forum wise is one common starting page on swgemu.com where the user can decide to go to the community or the development part of the project
The current server setup is as follows:Chicago dedicated box - all site services except IRC
Denver dedicated box - all test centers, Liberator/Nova/STM
IRC VPS host
QA Department VPS - running Windows only software
Second Denver dedicated box - Community Division server for new site in TESTING/SETUP
We are still working out the details but the idea is to move the resposibility of Liberator off TheAnswer's plate and onto the Community Division. This along with the dedicated Development Site will help focus the Dev Team on the current Nova code and the eventual achievement of SWGEmu V1.00
We will be meeting again in two weeks to firm up the details on the Development Site and Server Setup - and will report back to you then on the plans.
Please feel free to leave your constructive comments and questions in this thread.