Answers in this category:
polarhome's initial policy
policy change 2001.10.10
policy change 2002.03.07
policy change 2005.08.01

There are just 3 rules:

-Have full respect to other users (they want to feel themselves free as well)
-Nobody can be destructive in any sense of the word.
-Knowledge, optimism and love is must (there is no tolerance for decadence)

faq

Minutes from decision maker:

October 3rd, 2001 polarhome.com came to a dead-end of free shell providing activity. The whole system was a disaster, even with raising popularity. Therefore, system administrator gave a proposal to close polarhome.com in his declaration.

During next few days administrator's mailbox was full of unsatisfied users opinion, but among these letters were about 200 creative supporters that thought that there is a possibility to continue with closer and more trustful community, that can really focus on main goals of existence of this kind of system.

It was easy to see that polarhome.com has to continue, but there were some unanswered questions:

• What kind of services should polarhome provide?
• How can we divide positive and malicious users?
• What about identification?
• What about banned domain, hosts?
• Rights? Administration? etc.

Dividing ftp from shell?
We made this decision because ftp is fare more harmless then shell and requires much more knowledge and experience to turn it into attack. From other side with open ftp, mail, POP3, IMAP access most of the users could continue to use polarhome.com . They indeed, have been forced to change their mail reading or file editing habits, but they still could continue to use earlier services without interruption, including database administration etc.

Account creation should be slowed down.
In "free shell" period everybody could make a shell account in about 3 minutes. Request from the web, wait 3 minutes, log in into your new shell account. It was very popular method, that users liked very much. BUT as a non commercial service provider, all system administrators (in that time just amec and taken ) worked as a kind volunteers... and sometimes it took few days to cover up some malicious activity against remote hosts. So, 3 minutes to create an account and few days to delete it... resulted that users do not have any respect to their accounts. If I loose one... no problem, I can create 10 another.
Therefore we voted for hardcopy registration that takes at least 2-3 days... Now, we have 2-3 days for account and 2-3 days to delete if it is necessary (much better relation)... and as a side effect: user who waits few days for something has more respect for it.

Banned hosts and networks
Earlier, the only way how could we ban some hacker was by deleting it's account and ban his hosts and eventually whole network. Deleted account was not enough, because few minutes later he could create a new account and use the system with same rights and same purpose.
This method results with lot of innocent users that have been banned just because they come from same domain or network as some single hacker. It was not acceptable.
Therefore, we do not ban any domain or host any more. It is not necessary because of slow shell registration process it is very uncommon to abuse the shell.

Free or pay?
Also as earlier have been mentioned: to achieve better respect to own shell, we decided to ask some symbolic admission or AKA step up fee. It is a normal human (or should we call it homo sapience) behavior: if it  is free than who cares, but if I paid for it is mine.
Therefore, we decided to ask some kind of admission fee or step-up fee.

How high will be this fee?
Good question. If we ask $2 per month, it will be a very attractive fee and we will be soon or later very rich... but is our goal to be rich or to give a chance to the Internet generation to learn and be more experienced in networking, communication and security area instead... give them a possibility to be a member of amorph, multilingual and multinational community and to have a respect to all other members. polarhome.com is used by users all around the World and fixed price in one currency could put quite lot of users in negative position, because for money does not have same value for US citizens as for Brazilians or Romanians. In some countries people work whole month or even more for $10.
Therefore, we decided to have some price that it should not be fixed and should not be high, whatever part of the World user comes from. For this pricing (10 currency units) nobody can say that it is expensive. Value is about 2 beers or even less in almost every country. It is another question that somebody does not want to pay for this kind of service at all.

What user gets for it?
If user pays for something, he wants to get something... also human behavior. :-)
Therefore, shell have been improved. Space raised to 20M + 5M for mail and databases, crontab has been allowed, Java installed, PostgreSQL installed, hardware have been upgraded and made system more stable and secure. Hacking possibilities against localhost have been forbidden to ensure users security.

... and here we are with the new system. Not everybody satisfied, but we filtered out all these users that do not really belong to this community. We, together build our system, vote for new shell, buy new hardware... gather new knowledge.

polarhome.com is an independent, self managed, free community. Not big, but brave.

You can send your opinion to opinion@polarhome.com

Zoltan Arpadffy
polarhome.com
owner, system manager
faq

>From 2002.05.07. is valid the updated policy.

1. ftp/mail account are free as they were.
2. set up fee for shell account is 10 local currency but at least 2 USD 
value.
3. you can upgrade your account just personally - (seems it was not clear 
until now)
4. you do not have to use application form, but have to write down the 
whole text on some paper with all disclaimer etc.
5. application should be signed by hand
6. polarhome will accept old policy registrations during this week until 
Monday, 13th of May, 2002. 

Explanation:
- Some countries as Romania and Slovenia that has a much lower currency 
rate than other countries abused old policy by registering hundreds of 
account and use them without any respect. Higher registration fee should 
stop these users.
- Some users registered other user accounts to earn on polarhome. 

But how is possible to earn on polarhome... it means that it will not be 
upgrades, no hardware etc and polarhome will just die.

I do not need your registration fees... I have enough for myself and whole 
polarhome income so far, would not be enough to pay my real time fee for 
one single day. But all we are working and giving it to community, and I 
expect  from community to understand it:
- it means no arrogant requests
- positive approach
- help in problem solving
- tolerance in delays 
- tolerance in service quality 

I want to make it clear that polarhome is not an commercial site. We do 
not have advertising nor official sponsors... it is JUST community 
sponsored and driven. 

To be honest, polarhome does not need lot of users, does not need more 
publicity... it needs better quality and workspace for existing community.

Thanks for co-operation.

>From 2005.08.01 polarhome has new user policy. 
 
ftp accounts are (will be) revoked and just template and shell accounts
exist. This policy modification was needed in order to protect polarhome
from users that use their ftp accounts for phishing, spoofing, distributes
warez, running pirate forums and other malicious activity. ftp users can
continue to use polarhome until 2005.10.31. After that date ftp access will
be denied.
 
Polarhome for last five years has offered shell, ftp, mail and other online
public services. Unfortunately, there have been always some user that abused
these services.... and as time passed we have been forced to introduce
different security measures in order to keep services running. 
 
If you read through http://www.polarhome.com/news.php  and
http://www.polarhome.com/service/decision.html you can follow up how an
absolutely open, free shell site - "gateway to freedom" - becomes a gateway
to prison. A place full of fear from closed lines by ISP, abuse mails, "site not
available" messages etc.
 
Problems are caused by individuals. 
Individuals, malicious by hart or just ignorant that jeopardize existence of
whole community. The worst is that we can not do much more than close our
doors, restrict rights etc, in order to have as less possible services that
could be abused.
  
We need to be blind not to see the parallel with the real world.
Unfortunately, more police officers, ID checks and cameras will not help to
save the tube passengers. There can be always an individual who will be able
to damage, even the most efficiently shielded public service. 
 
This is valid to virtual, online World, as well. 
Public services are for ideal World where everybody follows at least one
rule "Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you."
For such idea to work The World needs more trust, dialog, love and
understanding of each other needs. 
 
Is it possible to realize such idea in such imperfect World with lot of
different interests? 
No, it is not... and it is written: "It will be just worse". One does not have
to be a prophet to see that we are every second closer to Armageddon - and
we just sit here and simply can not do anything against. There is nobody to
protect us, to lead us to the right side. 
 
I can almost hear your angry voice - but there is God. He will show us the
right way. 
Yes, probably he does show the path - unfortunately most of us do not listen
to God. Most of us prefer to listen to humans that translate God's words.
That causes troubles. Most of us mostly do what they are said to do, because
it is too hard to learn and have enough courage and competence to make a
decision alone. We became marionettes of our own neighbourhood.
 
I do believe in free will and in possibility to change this bloody
existentialistic destiny. We can not change the World, but we can make, at
least, ourselves better.
Polarhome community will be much smaller but closer and trust worth. 
 
What will happen now? What are the implications of new policy?
    
1.      introduced a template account - this account is a full featured
account but without ftp, ssh, shell etc access. Just e-mail access is
allowed. 
2.      earlier ftp accounts will exist until 2005.10.31
3.      1st of November ftp accounts will be converted to template accounts
and web pages will be archived and removed from web space
4.      from 1st of November just "hard copy" registered users will be able
to access polarhome services and change content of web space etc.
5.      because we raised the "trust level" PHP safe_mode will be turned OFF
and functions: mail() fsockopen() pfsockopen() stream_socket_client() will
be allowed  
 
In short: current ftp users have three choices:
1.      register a shell
2.      leave as it is and after three months use just e-mail
3.      stop using polarhome services 
 
The updated policy could be finding at
http://www.polarhome.com/service/policy.html
 
Please note, there are much better free e-mail providers as gmail, yahoo,
hotmail, msn etc. They are reliable - polarhome is not. Therefore, if you
need just e-mail service, it is recommended to use some huge respectful
company instead.
 
polarhome.com is non commercial, educative effort for popularization of
shell enabled operating systems and Internet services, offering shell
accounts, mail and other online services on all available systems...  and
polarhome is not afraid to take hard steps in order to fulfil this task. 
  
Regards, 
Z
owner and system manager
polarhome.com