I was thinking of the funds that HF had collected from the community and what interesting things could be done with it. I would like to suggest that we use funds (and possible canvas for more) to purchase more server hardware and storage to:

- create an official n900 thumb repository
- clone the existing maemo.org infrastructure for development/testing of changes to the maemo.org and autobuilder infrastructure (without risk of breaking production...)

I'd like to see some updates to the maemo.org infrastructure that take into account the direction things are going (at least with the n900 platform and probably the Neo900 if and when it becomes a reality.) I'd even volunteer to help where I can to make it a reality... I've had a chance to peek at a few aspects of midgard, autobuilder and associated scripts/databases and with an appropriate development and testing environment I think we can achieve these things.

AFAIK there is no need of additional HW for this to happen, the current infra can easily handle it. -thumb repo needs some kind of "official" support to happen - I guess from the council.

IIRC, the last time Council discussed this, it was agreed that someone needs to step forward to maintain such a repo and there were no objections but also nobody has stepped forward.

With the new elections under way, if someone is ready to step up then I don't see why the new Council can't instruct techstaff to set up the repo on existing infra.

Anyway, using those funds for something productive would be great. If "we" have hardware but lack human worktime, maybe we should fund a contract?

The problem is that the "funds" are rather little, and worker costs are rather high. There's just under $4K in the bank account. Even contracting someone part time (ignoring the legal things needed to do that), at a reasonable wage that would get us very little time. And if it's less than a reasonable wage, we'll likely get what we pay for, or the person would probably work as a volunteer already.

Think about how long it takes you to make $4K. Even at a minimum wage, working 20 hours a week, it doesn't take that long. And I don't know many admins/programmers that work at minimum wage.

Just out of interest, how much man power is required to maintain the thumb repository? Merlin should be in the best position to give us an idea.

Where I am heading with this: Sure, keeping a resident sysadmin, even part-time, is expensive. But for example the service deal I have with my car dealer is not. A fixed amount for two years, including a certain number of services and security checks. Any material or labour beyond that is extra.

Some similar kind of pay-as-you-go deal might be affordable. Are there any sysadmins offering that kind of service?