[H-GEN] Membership form

[Robert Brockway]

On Thu, 13 Aug 2009, Russell Stuart wrote:

> If there is a difference, it is one of choice.  When caliburn was set up
> and hosting arranged I suspect there weren't too many other choices
> available.  If it was going to happen at reasonable cost, using Humbug's
> contacts within UQ was the way it had to be.  Naturally the people with
> those contacts ran things.  Now it is different.  Renting a VM is within
> Humbug's budget.  It doesn't need special contacts - anyone can do it
> over the internet.  This means it can be done by anybody elected to the
> exec.  And since the Exec can now in a real sense "own and run" the VM,
> it should.

At the time the US$20/mo for a Linode was felt to be a bit pricey for 
Humbug to cope with on a sustained basis.

Russell, the cheaper alternatives you posted to #humbug one day looked 
interesting.  They may well be viable options.

Also, I believe there are a couple of free (as in beer) options available:

(1) A member works at a company that is setting up a Xen box for Humbug. 
This is happening RSN I understand ;)

(2) Linux Australia might be able to provide a Xen box, or so I have 
heard.  I'm not sure they have even been approached yet.

> Right now it doesn't, of course, thanks to Robert's generosity.  I don't

My personal company (OpenTrend Solutions Ltd) allocates 2% of gross 
revenue to a budget to be spent 'in support of OSS'.  It is out of this 
budget that I am funding excalibur.

This did get mentioned on H-Gen when excalibur went live but it was 
probably lost in the noise.  There was a lot going on at the time.

> know how long Robert will want to continue the current arrangement, but
> the fact we now have choices means the social dynamic has changed.

I originally committed to a minimum of 2 months but I consider it fairly 
open ended.  At the time it seemed that one of the free alternatives 
mentioned above would come to pass fair soon.  Naturally this takes longer 
than expected :)

If Humbug can find an alternative then those funds can go to help OSS in 
other ways (eg, a donation to SPI).

Cheers,

Rob

-- 
I tried to change the world but they had a no-return policy
Projected IPv4 exhaustion: http://www.potaroo.net/tools/ipv4/index.html