[arm-allstar] Web page update and Donations

[Doug Crompton]

 In brief we have added a DONATE link and icon icon on the hamvoip.org web
page along with much of the following text as latest news.

Many exciting things have happened in 2018 in the HAMVOIP community. We had
over 100 online updates adding many features, bug fixes, and general
improvements to the code. There have been over 22,000 downloads of the
image just this year. We added IRLP, greatly enhanced Supermon, added DNS
node lookup which greatly enhances the efficiency and timeliness of node
lookups and before the end of the year we will have all updated users on
the HAMVOIP registration server with the added advantage of private node
lookups. Our registration server is built from the ground up to work
efficiently and will be able to handle the expanding loads as Allstar users
grow. We now have server presence in Wilmington NC, Dallas TX, Los Angeles
CA, Denver CO, Chicago IL, and Secaucus, NJ.

Again in 2019 we plan many improvements and updates to the code including a
brand new channel driver significantly improving the radio interface
capabilities, support of the PC platform and the Rock64. We will be
introducing a “Pi farm” located at on of our very high bandwidth data
centers allowing users to rent space on a Pi and manage it remotely. We
will be introducing some really significant changes to the code this year
with a complete rewrite and overhaul scheduled for release. We also have
many smaller items on our list including the continual updating of the code
base and a few nagging problems are on the list of things to do such as
going to non-blocking streaming when using archive audio and Broadcastify
thus eliminating the annoying hangs when these services stop responding.
Also fixing the Allstar and Echolink code so audio hangs to not occur
during connections and fixing the experimental IRLP nodes which never did
work correctly.

Along with all this we are encountering out of pockets expenses for our
servers and development which are amounting to about $500 a month or $6000
a year. I know many of you have asked about donations in the past and we
decided until we became a firmly established entity we would not accept
them. The time has now come that we really need some community support to
meet our goals so we are putting a paypal donation icon on this web page to
accept donations. We plan to limit donations to the amount required in any
given year and we will inform you of the current donation totals to date
from time to time. You can use the donation icon on the web page to take
you directly to the paypal site or if you prefer you can go to the paypal
site on your own and use the address -  hvdonate at hamvoip.org  to donate.

HAMVOIP is not a 501c3 organization and due to the new tax laws in most
filing cases your donation would not be deductible even if we were a
non-profit.

Thank you for your past and continued support of HAMVOIP. We look forward
to providing you the best service possible in the coming year. Have a great
holiday and a very Happy New Year!

The HAMVOIP team