[PTTLink] Community FAQ - January 2021

[PeteM]

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On Saturday, January 23, 2021 11:19 PM, PTTLink Admin via PTTLink <pttlink at lists.pttlink.org> wrote:

> The PTTLink Team understands there are a number of unanswered questions
> from the community. The Team would prefer focusing on open source work,
> and our attempts to get community involvement back into the network,
> rather than addressing these “finger-pointing” style questions. However,
> we also recognize the community deserves answers to those questions.
> Please understand that some questions can only be addressed by publicly
> holding those responsible accountable for their actions. Our answers are a
> Team effort and took considerable time to compile based upon everyone’s
> understanding of what led to this. As such, we hope this answers the
> outstanding questions, and allows everyone to move forward with their
> community efforts.

Thank you again for this long and informative post. My questions are below.

>
>     It was left to the Admin Committee to identify the best use for resources,
>     configurations, and maintenance. This charter of the Admin Committee was
>     codified in the wiki and approved by the Board of Directors from day one
>     of AllStarLink, Inc. You can find the Admin Committee charter here:
>     https://wiki.allstarlink.org/wiki/Admin_Committee
>

This is a very interesting link. It would appear that KK9ROB has since modified this wiki article as of 20 January.


>
> -   Finally, the Letter to the Community of Jan 3, 2021, as it appears on
>     the community site, has been edited. We want to make it clear you should
>     ADD the PTTLink register lines, not replace the AllStarLink registration
>     lines. The entire goal of adding the lines is to allow registration on
>     both systems, we do NOT want to replace the AllStarLink network but rather
>     provide additional well managed and maintained registration servers and
>     backend resources. You can find the Letter to the Community here (which
>     includes links to both the post on Reddit and the edited copy on the
>     AllStarLink Community forum):
>     http://lists.keekles.org/pipermail/app_rpt-users/2021-January/021015.html
>

I see that there is indeed some editing that occurred.  While there is no mention of it on Community you can see a request for it in the comments. Has anyone from AllStarLink stated why this was done?

>
> 5.  Accusations of not being supportive of the board.
>
>     It has been commented that the Admin Committee did not support design
>     suggestions from the board. This is quite the contrary, the Admin
>     Committee took suggestions from anyone that provided them, and weighed
>     them equally to best serve the network and community.
>
>     One such example lies in the new registration software we believe to be
>     currently in use by AllStarLink. This software was originally brought
>     forth to the Admin Committee by Rob Vella (KK9ROB). The concept was
>     approved and embraced by the Admin Committee who also identified and fixed
>     multiple bugs while Rob appeared to have become unresponsive. By the time
>     of the cutover, over half of the registration systems were running this
>     code. Several improvements have been identified and made to increase the
>     stability of this code since its initial deployment.
>

What improvements have been made? Will these improvements be released as well?

>     After AllStarLink, Inc had received non-profit status, it was in receipt
>     of Amazon Web Services (AWS) credits which it had applied for and
>     subsequently led to community.allstarlink.org being relocated there by an
>     AllStarLink Board Member. On several occasions, the Admin Committee
>     requested access to the AWS infrastructure so we could make use of and
>     take advantage of these resources; we were told multiple times this would
>     not be possible as there was no funding available. This was not the case
>     as they have moved all services other than Community to the Google Cloud
>     Platform which does incur a recurring cost.
>

Do you have more information regarding AllStarLink's non profit status?

>     Finally, the Admin Committee recognized the lack of communication between
>     our team and the AllStarLink, Inc Board of Directors. Multiple attempts to
>     raise board members on internal communication channels would go weeks
>     without an answer, if any was given at all. Requests for representation at
>     board meetings to help bridge this gap were ignored. While a 3rd party did
>     volunteer for this role, the lack of commitment and follow-through by the
>     board resulted in little more than the continued empty assurances and
>     broken promises at transparency and communication which had been promised
>     to the Admin Committee many times.
>

Who was this 3rd party that is mentioned? How much did they contribute and participate?

>     The Admin Committee dedicated multiple years, countless hours of sleepless
>     nights, and made every reasonable effort within their power as volunteers
>     to keep the AllStarLink network running for the enjoyment of all hams. In
>     the end, this team is a group of hobbyists that feel that they were let
>     down by the AllStarLink, Inc. Board of Directors for their lack of
>     communication, failure to understand and unwillingness to explore the
>     reasoning and technical constraints behind the design of the AllStarLink
>     infrastructure. Resulting, more often than not in service outages caused
>     by the implementation of their ideas without involving the Admin
>     Committee, and placing it in production without adequate testing. During
>     the numerous attempts at having meaningful discussion with the board
>     regarding redesign, the reply often came back “The board is technical too”
>     in an attempt to justify their actions.
>

While this is interesting information it also does not go into any detail on what was done. And can you elaborate on that last sentence?

> 6.  Asterisk GitHub Repository.
>
>     The “AllStarLink” GitHub repository started as a single account with the
>     email address of developers at allstarlink.org. GitHub at the time did not
>     offer much to free accounts, so this was very much just a public place to
>     stash the code that wasn’t on the old www.allstarlink.org site/server.
>     Stacy was given the user account credentials (several people had them) and
>     fixed some things up with regards to inviting others as repo
>     admins/maintainers, etc. Unfortunately, one of the maintainers pushed an
>     unreviewed pull request directly into the master branch without telling
>     anyone. Fortunately, Stacy saw the notice sent to the developers@ email
>     (which was an alias for several people at this point) and was able to
>     login and back the commit out, and push it into its own branch where it
>     remains to this day. To ensure that this wouldn’t happen again, the
>     developer account was removed and instead made into a personal
>     organization with the name of AllStarLink. Stacy then went through and
>     set up branch protections that require two people to review code submitted
>     to develop and main, among other fixups and integrations in an effort to
>     prevent this from happening again. The AllStarLink GitHub repository has
>     always been a separate entity controlled by the developers, of which Stacy
>     was originally brought on by Bryan Fields (W9CR) as the lead developer for
>     AllStarLink and later also became an admin. Owners of this new
>     organization included Tim Sawyer (WD6AWP), an AllStarLink, Inc. board
>     member, who was responsible for the unreviewed commit which led to this
>     new personal organization being created.
>

With regards to commits was there anything mentioned regarding how to handle them? Was Tim qualified to review what I imagine is C code to approve such a commit? If not then why did he approve and merge it?


> 7.  Allocation of Resources from the American Registry for Internet
>     Numbers (ARIN).
>

>     Finally, after many months of research, Bryan tracked down the Agreement
>     from Jim’s estate as it had been submitted to the Federal Communications
>     Commission (FCC) in an application requesting the transfer of the WB6NIL
>     callsign. This action made it a matter of public record in the Universal
>     Licensing System (ULS) for the WB6NIL reassignment to AllStarLink, Inc.
>     (who had previously applied for a callsign as a radio club). While the
>     Agreement does list several items in its Appendix A related to the ARIN
>     resources, and defines it as assigned property, the Agreement not only
>     does not identify Jim to have been the owner of the items and/or
>     associated businesses, it does not actually assign any of the items in
>     Appendix A to AllStarLink, Inc.. Additionally, the Agreement does not have
>     a valid signature from the AllStarLink, Inc. Secretary on it. Both are
>     major oversights in the Agreement resulting in the ARIN helpdesk making
>     the determination that the Agreement is inadequate evidence of ownership
>     and denied any transfer of resources to AllStarLink, Inc. Bryan informed
>     AllStarLink, Inc that he was unable to update ARIN’s records to transfer
>     control of the assets as AllStarLink, Inc. did not have a valid Agreement
>     to recover admin access to the resources. AllStarLInk, Inc. was also
>     informed of the ARIN procedures required to correct this when Bryan stated
>     he didn’t feel comfortable to continue. Todd promptly threatened to sue
>     Bryan for taking these actions on behalf and at the request of the
>     AllStarLink, Inc. Board of Directors. You can find the document in
>     question here listed under Attachments as “Agreement from Heir”. Refer to
>     section 6 for details:
>     https://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/ApplicationSearch/applAdmin.jsp?applID=11845728
>

There are so many question that this brings up. Too many in fact. I do not even know where to begin. I will think about this and maybe ask them later.

>     This was all done in an attempt to not only protect the IP and ASN ranges,
>     but also the AllStarLink, Inc from the potentially fraudulent actions of a
>     Board member. Additionally, there is also a real possibility that the IPs
>     would be reclaimed by ARIN as the organizations that do own the IP address
>     spaces could be found in default and no longer operational. There can be
>     no financial remuneration to anyone involved including Bryan, Jim’s
>     estate, or AllStarLink, Inc. until ARIN has enough evidence to modify the
>     admin contacts.
>

Why not let the AllStarLink board commit this fraudulent action?

> 8.  A few last words.
>
>     Again, the PTTLink statements and letters are the product of a team
>     effort, and not just that of a single person. Every team member has the
>     opportunity to review and hold the others on the team accountable for what
>     they write. We strive to be transparent, forthcoming, and always stating
>     the truth, even if it is uncomfortable.
>
>     PTTLink is not against AllStarLink but rather a group created as a
>     consequence of the AllStarLink, Inc. Board of Directors actions. PTTLink
>     exists to maintain, and enhance, the registration and associated ancillary
>     services system for the benefit of all. One of the core values of PTTLink
>     is to promote, stimulate and provide enhancements and growth to the
>     amateur radio community at-large. To this very end PTTLink has already
>     committed to, and begun, working on an agnostic multi-network capable
>     version of app_rpt and associated programs. This includes, but is not
>     limited to, open-sourcing key components used to create your own network
>     for registration and DNS lookup, the establishment of the network prefix
>     schema and associated repository for multi-network support.
>
>     It is the desire of the PTTLink team to have this be the final letter
>     addressing this matter. The team wishes to move forward and work together
>     with the amateur community at-large to support, innovate, and grow this
>     amazing community and hobby.
>
>     Signed,
>     The PTTLink Team--

Thank you for this. However I do not see alot of blame being taken by your group. Everyone has is to blame for what happened. AllStarLink,Inc does take the lions share of this blame but your group isn't without blame too.

I do look forward to the contributions your group is making. I have already visited your repository and the one where the tools and registry are.