Hi, The compile farm project is run entirely by volunteers under the FSF France umbrella who try to:
1/ get machines donated from vendors 2/ find free hosting for the donated machines 3/ install and do minimal adminsys on the machines once in the farm Many people and organizations have contributed and continue to do so but obviously the hardest part is 1/ and 2/ where sometimes things can go on for one or two years before moving to step 3, sometimes unfortunately nothing happens after lots of volunteer time spent. Then step 3/ can be complicated because few people have access and/or time to do hands on maintenance when things break (and they do). In the free software ecosystem I perceive the compile farm as coming after kernel developpers, distribution developpers and specific important userland software developpers: we try cover the rest of the userland free software community with minimal hardware donation and hassle from hardware vendors. Obviously it's not always easy for people inside hardware companies to get some free stuff donated to the farm without direct and strong business case. So if you have good relations with hardware vendors or people able to host machines (we don't use much bandwidth, and newer hardware tend to be energy efficient these days) feel free to contact them on the compile farm behalf explaining the business case above, this is a good way to help the compile farm. We started with a few Pentium 3 boxes at the end of 2005 so nearly 9 years ago, there are now 435 user accounts and a few hardware makers and DC hosters are friendly to us. There will be a few announcements soon: I received new machines this weeko in Toulouse (France) from a well-known hardware vendor, and two other vendors donation projects are in good shape. Sincerely, Laurent _______________________________________________ Gcc-cfarm-users mailing list Gcc-cfarm-users@gna.org https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/gcc-cfarm-users
