[Noisebridge-discuss] VA machines

[Dr. Jesus]

After asking around some more, I discovered something which is obvious
in hindsight: most of the larger open source software projects aren't
coordinating with each other with regard to sharing donated hardware
and colocation resources.  Modern virtualization technology and the
scale of the hardware inventory I'm facing could allow them to share,
but an organization (like Noisebridge) has to step up to set this up.

Therefore, after noisebridge is done with these machines in the short
term, and assuming that we don't find a sponsor to host them for our
internal use, my plan is as follows.

I'm going to set up a project under the noisebridge umbrella which
will coordinate the use of the VA endowment by the various open source
projects with a hardware presence in the San Francisco Bay Area.  This
opens some doors for hosting resources that won't be available if
noisebridge is going to use the machines purely for its internal use.
No project within noisebridge has expressed any need for the pile in
the long term yet, and I'm assuming no such project exists.

Such a "lending library" may already exist somewhere, but I asked
around and couldn't find such an organization.  If you know of one (in
particular, I have little visibility into the Linux Foundation and
suspect such a thing may exist under them), please shoot me a note.
It's a waste for me to set this up if another organization already has
this covered in our region.

If you're well connected with a commercial organization which relies
on open source and would like access to the resource pool in exchange
for contributing a little to it, I'd like to talk to you too.

If you have a pile of parts in your garage that you know is useful to
someone, somewhere, but you want to make sure it gets put to good use
instead of just tossed, then I'd like to talk to you as well.

Once I'm sure that I'm not going to be duplicating any effort by doing
this, the next step will be to set up an online resource broker to
provide the following services:

 - Warehousing and inventorying of tangible hardware in the resource pool.

 - Matchmaking between non-shareable hardware donations and the causes
that need them.

 - Collective bargaining tools and a single point of contact for
companies that want to get unsupported hardware into the hands of open
source developers.

 - Government grant application and administration tools.  A DUNS
number for Noisebridge should be allocated tomorrow (thanks, Rachel!).
 We're SIC group 8641, "Membership organizations engaged in civic,
social, or fraternal activities."

 - Colocation of computers in the resource pool ("the farm.")  This is
where I'm most limited.  At most, I can colocate about one cabinet's
worth of the Rackable machines using my existing resources and the
offers I have on hand, assuming a 50% followthrough rate.

 - A system manager which will provide power management, job
scheduling, netboot services, and resource allocation among the
different projects with access to the computers in the farm.

I'm setting a deadline of July 4th to make a decision on whether or
not to proceed.  I'll speak briefly at the meeting tomorrow about my
plan to promote it, but will reserve discussion about it for the
mailing list.  If I don't see any good reason not to proceed by the
July 4th meeting, I'll go ahead.