From the President

[Dave Fitzgerald]

Greetings Everyone,
We have been in the process of moving our website over to a new server. Most of the problems have been solved at this point but we still have a few bugs to work out. I will keep you posted as to our progress in this matter. It may take a few more days to get everything up and running smoothly. Sorry for the inconvenience guys. For the time being, I will work on this web software to get it working right and make a few minor improvements. Our plans are to create a new, more up-to-date website within the next few months or so. Thank you for your patience.

Unfortunately, we do not have the previous posts for the last several years. We have requested that data from Bill Harris, the former webmaster, however, he has refused to provide it. He appears to be taking the position he owns the forum, rather than ICS. Instead of attempting to interpret Mr. Harris’ position, I have included the last communication that we had on the subject:



On 3 May 2008 at 8:23,Dave Fitzgerald wrote:

Bill,
I hope you will reconsider your choice not to send the ICS Forum to me.
I will have to explain the reason I don't have it to the general
Membership. This may, and most likely will, cause a negative reflection on you and it really serves no good purpose. You cannot use the ICS posts in any way on another forum. The general membership is
appreciative of all the work you have done and I would like to keep it
that way. However, I need to turn the forum on soon. So please
reconsider your decision and let me know before I have to turn it on.

Thanks
Dave Fitzgerald
ICS President

Bill Harris wrote:
Let me make this clear.

The Forum was not developed or run at ICS expense. It was
developed and run at my expense, and MCS expense. I have not
given you permission to use any part of the Forum, in fact, I have
specifically reserved all the rights.

You will open yourself and ICS up for action if you use this
outside of what I have told you. If you choose to go that way, and
them misrepresent the ownership of the Forum, that would be
slander.

If you think for just a minute, and compare what Dale has done to
what I have done and how it was represented, you will realize the
problem you face with your approach.

Bill

William M. Harris
President, Motion Control Systems, Inc.
bill@motioncontrol.org


In order to provide some background regarding the development of the ICS website, I have provided this summary from ICS’s first webmaster, John Dunning:


From John Dunning the creator of the ICS website.

Hi everyone. Dave asked me to give a summary of the actual history of
the web site development, and how we got to where we are.

I don't remember the exact dates, but roughly 5-6 years ago, there was
a very simple ICS web site, run by Bruce Berman. There was no ability
to access the member databases, tips, tribe pages, anything like that.
There was no forum run by ICS, only the Delphi one run by Dale
Vandever.

I and others kept asking ICS to get real about putting together a web
site that was a bit more modern and capable. I offered to build a
prototype of such a web site, just to show what could be done. I
built the first version of what later became the official ICS site on
my home server. I used no proprietary software, everything was either
written by me or was freely downloadable. The operating system on the
machine is linux, which is also free. As part of that effort, I
downloaded phpbb, a free forum software package.

Using that body of software, I put up the site at
http://www.jrd.org/n8962p/ics/, part of my home system. That web site
ran for several months, and started accumulating data, including
postings on the forum. After a while (again, not sure of the exact
date) I began lobbying ICS to move the site off my home
server. because it seemed like a bad idea to rely on my home internet
connection for this kind of web site. At that time, the Board was
reluctant to spend any money on a hosting service, so Bill Harris
offered to give us space on one of his servers. After that was agreed
to, I moved the entire site to Bill's server. Thereafter, I managed
the site remotely.

Early in the life of the web site, I believe before it was transferred
to Bill's server, we did contract with an outside web design firm to
do graphic design on the site. They built the present skins and
graphics for the site, at an expense of $300.00, as I recall. To my
knowledge, that was the only money ever spent on the web site. As
above, all the software in the web site was either written by me, and
donated to ICS, or was free on the web. A number of the pieces of
software not written by me come with linux, such as the png tools,
pdftohtml etc. The html editting cgi is HTMLarea; the current version
is downloadable at
http://www.dynarch.com/projects/htmlare ... 071025.zip.
The forum software is phpbb, the version I used is no longer
supported, but the current version is at
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfile ... _id=215208

I have not been keeping track of events on the web site since October
2005, so I can't speak to whether Bill or anybody else has incurred
other expenses since then. As to the original devlopment of the site,
including the forum, it was all done with no expense other than the
graphic design, which was paid for by ICS. The work was done mostly
by me, with some help from a few other volunteers.

Please let me know if you need more information or clarification on
the history.

John Dunning



The ICS board is currently reviewing its options in the face of Bill Harris’s refusal to give us the forum, with all the past posts. We will keep the membership informed of any new developments. In the meantime, I encourage everyone to use this forum in the same manner that we used the old ICS forum.

My intent is not to create any ill feeling toward Mr. Harris, but I feel the ICS membership has a right to know why I am not able to put the ICS forum back on line.

[howard]

Hopefully this problem goes away soon. Man maybe we should all ask for our messages back?
LOL Howard
figures . I really only ever wanted one forum and now I have to wonder if the delphi one is the real forum? hmmm this will be interesting
Howard

[Alan Cheak]

Hey Bill if your holding the information as a hostage.......well I hope you choke on it........

Alan

[FLFlyer]

Disappointing behavior to be sure.

J. Guess
14592

[Don Miller]

I'll reserve judgement until I hear both sides of this story.

I am grateful for the important contribution Bill and Nancy Harris have made over the years to these ICS websites and would like to thank them for the time and money they invested for the benefit of we Comanche owners and enthusiasts.

Don Miller ICS 4987

[howard]

I would echo thanks for Bill Harris for his efforts to help keep the comanche forum running. I would also hope that whatever differences are causing this present rather strange stuff from going on can be resolved. The spirit of both forums has always been one of sharing , mostly freely with the membership . Some folks share freely while also having a pecuniary interest in being involved. Some of these do it quietly (the good ones) some do it a bit louder. Melot, Matt, both play along quietly and sharing knowledge freely.
Thanks Howard

[IO720]

I wonder how Mr. Harris would feel if an airplane developed an issue that resulted in an accident causing injury or death that could have been avoided if access to the forum's past articles was still available. This would have allowed the owner of the aircraft the knowledge necessary to perform the preventive maintainence required to avoid the accident.

I know I couldn't live with myself.

Rick Mascari

[Tony Scarpelli]

It is sad that this has happened however we can rebuild the forums better. The real value was not what was posted but what we have in our heads that we can post.

I encourage all to do the same.

[BillyO]

As a new twinco owner,mechanic, and new ICS member, I have/am relying heavily on past forums as well as member tech info. It's disappointing that this was'nt resolved prior to the new web change. I would hope for Comanche community and future growth we'll have all the history soon. Thanks for working it out.

BillyO

[Steve Marcozzi]

I have done a lot of work on our a/c with the information in the history of the ICS forum. My IA has worked on Comanches for decades and has been duly impressed at this resource.

I still belong to the Short Wing Piper Club that had a similar ego meltdown over forums.

Cool heads prevailed and now there are two forums that provide more information and viewpoints than ever.

http://www.shortwing.org/TestSite/

and....

http://www.shortwingpipers.org/

The people here need to come down from their respective mountains and put this safety critical infomation back out for use, before there is an accident story to post.

All good and bad actions in an organizations are attributable to the people in control. Do the right thing and get this resolved.

Steve Marcozzi

[FLFlyer]

Simple solution, no handwringing. Give Mr. Harris what he wants in the belief that the ICS is not going to disappear and that the database will not be given or sold to another entity. If either of the former happens, deal with it as necessary.

J. Guess
14592

[Bill@66y]

Dave,
Everything seems to be working fine now.
Thanks,
Bill...

[Mike Brannigan]

[Bill@66y]

Dave,
I attempted to upload the avitar I was using previously and it will no longer work. Apparently the size allocated for avitars has been reduced as a message is received that states only 12 kb is allowed. Mine was 36 kb and worked fine previously. Based on experience with the original avitar, 12 kb is not enough space to be of meaningful use.
Bill...

[aiu0462]

Boy,,,,,I signed up for the information here to help me with my new to me 260B. You can keep the money I sent in last month, but I will not renew next year. Very Sad.
Steve