Christopher Mooney

It’s time for new hardware. Once again we have pushed our current hardware well beyond its warranty or any reasonable meantime to failure. We are out of memory constantly, we are out of CPU frequently, and we are seeing I/O storms that bring the box to its knees. If none of this matters to you, then consider the fact that we are pushing seven years on the original hard drives for our server. Hardware failure will happen very soon, and like our last hard drive, it may happen next time we loose power to the box.

We have been working for months to find a great deal on hardware, and we think we’ve found a good balance between total junk at a low price point, and high quality hardware at unreasonable prices. In the past we have used one primary server for everything and another secondary server for backup services. We are changing this model completely to be more secure, to reduce downtime, and to dynamically expand and contract with load. We are calling this new model a “cell“, which we believe necessary to build the type of infrastructure outlined in our mission statement.

Project DoD is looking for 30 people to each make a $250 tax-deductible donation towards new hardware. If some of you cannot make a $250 donation, then consider this: Project DoD is also looking for 250 people to each make a $30 tax-deductible donation. In short, we desperately need your financial assistance. So please make a donation to our new hardware fund. You can view how close we are to our goal, and the specific hardware we’re looking at on the donations page.

Finally, if you think there is anything you can do to assist us with fund raising please let us know. This is a very hard year for non-profit organizations because of the economy, and while we’re sure you’re sick of hearing about the economy consider this: 2009 is the first year in nine that the collective has been unable to support itself. What’s more, this year has been our most active ever. It’s unfortunate that we need to replace our hardware now, but we also believe we are well positioned to execute some very exciting and revolutionary plans if we can pull through. So please stay tuned for more information on what we’ve been working on, and how it could change collective hosting in the future.

We’ve been working very hard at finishing our donation system so that it does everything we ever wanted it to. There has been lots of behind-the-scenes work on restructuring our user databases so that the idea of a “doduser” is separate from a “user”. The former being a login account that allows people to make contributions through the account manager, and the latter being a real user on our servers with hosting or mail access.

We have also made roles for each user that allow them to be a volunteer, a member, or any other role we define in the future. This has taken a considerable about of work to change all of our source code, and we still have a bunch of work ahead of us. Nevertheless, all of these changes should be done in a few weeks.

For now, we have added a new page off the donations page that allows you to view our financial records over the history of the organization. We hope you find this interesting and informative. I should say that in our early years we used to just use our bank records as documentation of our Expenses. A few years ago they started archiving those records so that we didn’t have access to them in digital form. It was around that time that we started keeping our own records, but some of the earlier years are sparse. Remember, we’ve been around since 1998, and there was a day when we used to pay $850.00 a month for a T1.

As we mature, so does our organization. I’m throwing out the mission statement ideas that Dan Mays and I have been tossing back and forth over the past few weeks. Think of this as scratch paper, and please comment or suggest revisions if necessary. We are trying to form Project DoD’s future vision. These are ambitious goals, and it’s our “projects” that should set much more actionable and realistic objectives towards these ends. So, welcome to design by committee: please comment and correct this mission statement is _not_ written in stone.

GOALS:

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Project DoD is a charitable 501(c)(3) nonprofit organized to:

(a) Sponsor or perform research and development of technologies that help all societies create a more just and equitable future. We firmly believe that freedom, privacy, security, and economic stability are fundamental human rights, and that a focus on any one goal should not come at the expense of the others. That is, to create a future where humanity is free of coercion, censorship, exploitation, abuse, poverty, and all other conditions through which the powerful impose their will on the less fortunate, one must enjoy freedom, privacy, security, and economic stability in equal measure. We are seeking to

(b) establish a globally distributed network of organizations and individuals committed to building an infrastructure that meets the objectives of (a) above. This infrastructure should be resistant against the collapse of any one supporting organization, the assault of any government, organization, or individual, or the physical destruction of any one part of its network. We believe such an infrastructure should be participatory, and that its members should be empowered by a fully democratic decision making process. However, such an infrastructure must also be resilient against mob-rule and vanguardism. We shall also

(c) resist any threat, social, legal, physical, environmental, or otherwise, that seeks to compromise the principals of either (a) or (b) above. That is, any threat that seeks to undermine either fundamental human rights, or compromise the mechanism we believe necessary to ensure those rights, must be challenged and neutralized. We are committed to engaging such threats using both legal and technological methods, so long as the means of engagement does not also violate principals (a) and (b) above.

Project DoD believes that it is often the most impoverished members of society that suffer violations of their fundamental human rights. For this reason, historically, we have been slightly more focused on empowering the underprivileged through our projects. Nevertheless, our vision is for all members of society, and will never be limited to just the poor. Please be aware that Project DoD’s mission is intended to be axiomatic, but broad. Each particular project that we work on has much more realistic and actionable objectives that serve the ends in this mission statement. Please find out more about our projects and how they are helping to build this future.

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NOTE: this post was also sent to the Project DoD collective mailing list.

Well this news is about a year late, but we thought we should give a shout-out to all the members that made our official nonprofit status possible. As many of you know, Project DoD applied for 501(c)(3) public charity status in 2003 after a good five years of operation. At the time we didn’t have the financial records to use our previous five years to pass the public support test, which meant we were put into an advanced determination period by the IRS so they could put us through the public support test at the end of another five year period. Well, in 2008 we passed that test and received documentation by the IRS stating that we are now an official 501(c)(3) nonprofit without any of the restrictions on organizations still in their advanced determination period. We want to thank everyone that supported us over the past 11 years, and we wanted to assure you that we are determined to forge ahead with our purpose. We have a bunch of technology and fund raising projects in the works, so stay tuned.