The Tau Ceti Cooperative was formed in February 2003 by a group of people who sought to support an open and accessible web hosting service.

Originally, for many of the original Tau Ceti members, the web hosting service was being provided by IT Works Consulting. Gavin Cameron, the director of IT Works, decided to wind down his business and this became the driver for those people to form the co-operative and continue to operate a web-server to host their sites.

Since many of the founding memebers of Tau Ceti are internet and software developers who support the open source movement, it was clear that the best way to ensure that their server remained online would be to form a co-operative.

How the Tau Ceti Co-operative operates.
The Tau Ceti Co-operative Ltd is governed by a set of rules which are registered with the Registrar of Co-operatives in the State of Victoria, Australia. Like all registered co-operatives we are also covered by the Co-operatives Act of 1996.

By way of background, co-operatives are governed by a board who acts on the part of the membership. They start with a formation meeting and then the co-operative is run in part by general meetings which involve all the membership and also by board meetings where the board is either acting on behalf of the membership at their discretion, or at the direction of the membership. You can find copies of the minutes for the formation meeting, board and general meetings we have held further down this page.

At Tau Ceti Co-operative we've also tried to formalise some areas the board would act in so that everyone would be kept aware of what is going on in areas where the board may act in a manner that affects the membership - this is encapsulated in The Standing Orders for Business Conduct. The standing orders not only serve to give people a more specific idea of how we run things but also provide some means of storing our collective wisdom. The current version is dated January 2008.

Minutes for General Meetings held to date

Minutes from the most recent meeting are provisional on acceptance at the next meeting.

• 14th Sep. 2006, Annual General Meeting Minutes
  Main business: Presentation of the Reports from the Board and Treasurer and election of Directors.

• 18th Aug. 2005, Annual General Meeting Minutes
  Main business: Presentation of the Reports from the Board and Treasurer and election of Directors.

• 8th Jul. 2004, Annual General Meeting Minutes
  Main business: Presentation of the Reports from the Board and Treasurer and election of Directors.

• 3rd Mar. 2003, Special General Meeting Minutes
  Main business: resolve our arrangment with ITWorks, adopting the Standing Orders for Business Conduct and nomination of a Webmaster.

• 17th Feb. 2003, Formation Meeting Minutes
  Main business: forming the co-operative, election of Directors and appointment of a Treasurer.

Minutes for Board Meetings held to date

Minutes from the most recent meeting are provisional on acceptance at the next meeting.

• 12th April. 2008. Board Meeting Minutes
  Main Business: sale of Venus and Financial Report.

• 17th January. 2008. Board Meeting Minutes
  Main Business: change in co-location provider, service prices, Financial Report and election of a new Treasurer.

• 21st October. 2007. Board Meeting Minutes
  Main Business: change in co-location provider and Financial Report.

• 6th October. 2007. Board Meeting Minutes
  Main Business: hardware upgrade and Financial Report.

• 4th July. 2007. Board Meeting Minutes
  Main Business: hardware upgrade and Financial Report.

• 28th March. 2007. Board Meeting Minutes
  Main Business: System monitoring software, hardware upgrade and Financial Report.

• 12th December. 2006. Board Meeting Minutes
  Main Business: System monitoring software, hardware upgrade and Financial Report.

• 14th September. 2006. Board Meeting Minutes
  Main Business: Change in co-hosting contract.

• 17th June. 2006. Board Meeting Minutes
  Main Business: Change in co-hosting contract.

• 30th May. 2006. Board Meeting Minutes
  Main Business: Disposal of old server Mercury, discussion of content management software for the website.

• 9th February. 2006. Board Meeting Minutes
  Main Business: Disposal of old server Mercury, discussion of change in content management software for the website.

• 26th October. 2005. Board Meeting Minutes
  Main Business: Disposal of old server Mercury, changes to the Standing Orders for Conduct of Business and Financial Report.

• 14th July. 2005. Board Meeting Minutes
  Main Business: Disposal of old server Mercury, renewal of the Surgemail license and Financial Report.

• 23rd March. 2005. Board Meeting Minutes
  Main Business: Purchase of virus scanning software and Financial Report.

• 16th December. 2004. Board Meeting Minutes
  Main Business: Status of the new server project, purchase of virus scanning software and Financial Report.

• 23rd September. 2004. Board Meeting Minutes
  Main Business: Completion of the new server project, purchase of virus scanning software and mail server software, Financial Report.

• 24th July. 2004. Board Meeting Minutes
  Main Business: software to be installed on the new server to support the server migration, development of policies for future software installation and consideration of applications for membership.

• 8th July. 2004. Board Meeting Minutes
  Main Business: the financial report, status of the hardware upgrade project and the purchase of SurgeMail email software for the upgraded server.

• 4th March. 2004. Board Meeting Minutes
  Main Business: the financial report, status of the hardware upgrade project, changes to the content of the Tau Ceti website and the purchase of a license for virus scanning software.

• 4th December. 2003. Board Meeting Minutes
  Main Business: the financial report, changes to the Standing Orders for Business Conduct and a discussion on the right to use the Class C address space used by the Co-operative.

• 4th September. 2003. Board Meeting Minutes
  Main Business: the financial report, the administration of a wiki and the generation of a new SSL certificate.

• 16th June. 2003. Board Meeting Minutes
  Main Business: the provision and pricing of addition logins per domain.

• 13th June. 2003. Board Meeting Minutes
  Main Business: the provision and pricing of secondary DNS services.

• 27th May. 2003. Board Meeting Minutes
  Main Business: treasurer's report.

• 26th Feb. 2003. Board Meeting Minutes
  Main Business: resolve the resignation of a director and appoint another member to fill the position.