[Noisebridge-discuss] VA machines

[Christie Dudley]

Wow, this is a brilliant idea if there's nothing out there already
duplicating this effort.  One point though...  You mean the decision
by August 4th?

Christie

---
 Disrupting paradigms since 1967



On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 11:46 PM, Dr. Jesus<j at hug.gs> wrote:
> 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.
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