> > > Another thought : a dual use room. By day it is an ordinary lab,
> > > by night : the SLUGhaus. Trade off - computers donated and cared
> > > for by SLUG, real estate owned by grateful users.
> >
> > Perhaps a public library ?
> >
> what about a uni Lab ?
If approached in the correct mannet (i.e. no Windows FUD), I believe
this is probably achievable.
> 1 create a beowulf farm from 386's and use it for Uni projects or hire it as
> test lab. Or if it gets large hire the processing power ;-)
Hmmm... Well, it *would* give me somewhere to put all those 486's in
the garage..;.:-)
> 2 Create a Slug "Porting Centre". Provide expertise for Companies to prove
> their applications on linux :-). IBM et al have been doing this for years
> with Unix. Call it "Linux Ready" ;-)
This would be a very worthwhile enterprise, IMHO, but it gets us into
the area of "sponsorship" again. If the <insert facillity provider
here> sees that there is substantial commercial interest in the
facillity, they may be tempted to accept sponsorship for same,
obviously thinking that they will be relieving their financial burden,
and at the same time "doing us a good turn".
>3 Contact the University Union.
This has substantial merit as well.
The problem I see with all of this is someone, somewhere, sometime will
either be co-opted into running the facillity, or we would have to
actually employ someone to do this (depending on the level of
popularity of the facillity, of course)`
It's a bit of a case of getting caught between the proverbial Rock and
it's equally proverbial Hard Place. There is no easy solution - until,
at least, the following questions are solved;
1. Do SLUG accept "sponsorship" to setup / run such a facillity as
proposed, be that sponsorship in $$$, space, gear, distros, etc. ?
2. Do SLUG then, by virtue of accepting any of the items under (1)
above, become obliged in some manner to promote the aims and desires of
their sponsors ?
3. If space is provided by a Uni, etc. what conditions / restrictions
are placed on it (i.e. 24 hour access to all financial SLUG members,
etc).
I'm sure there will be many many more, but these are some of the things
that came up when the old BBC Micro group was offered "sponsorship"
about 15 years ago by Barson Computers (who happened to be the
importer).
If these problems can be resolved, or at least a plan of action agreed
upon, there is an extremely high potential for such a facillity, not
only as a clubhouse, but a training facillity, sortware porting
facillity, "thinktank", configuration and hardware testing centre - the
list is practically endless.
And I hear, from informed sources, that such an endeavour would
generate some seriously good press (both print AND TV) !!
--
Regards,
Jon
--------------------------------------------------
"It is irresponsible to connect a Windows machine
to the Internet" ....... John Wiltshire (SLUG)
--
SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/
More Info: http://slug.org.au/lists/listinfo/slug
