[Consortium] Hardware loan policy

[Richard Bown]

On Thursday 26 February 2004 09:37, Daniel James wrote:

> Rather than have centralised co-ordination, you mean? Sounds like a
> bit of a free-for-all. I think a donor company would rather be
> working with a single contact who would take responsibility for the
> hardware.

But coordinating between counties and projects is a lot of work for a single 
person.  What about saying that each project/company uses their nominated 
person on the board of LinuxAudio to do all this discussion? Then everyone 
involved is recognised and seen as being "responsible" at least.

> Here I think the consortium could have a role in making the hardware
> to the people who could make the best use of it.
>
> Perhaps instead of rotating the hardware, we could set up a scheme
> whereby one developer or site 'X' agrees to be the maintainer of
> support for device 'Y', and other developers who want to test their
> software on 'Y' have to work with 'X'. That way, 'X' gets the benefit
> of having the loan hardware on-site, but also has the responsibility
> to work with the community on support for it.

I don't think you'll get much joy trying to impose a structure on how either 
the hardware or the work could be distributed.  It's up to people to work as 
they feel like it - if they can get their hands on the hardware then and 
there then that'll help it out.  I think the approach here has to be 
pragmatic as in many cases if the interested developer wants some hardware 
they can always buy it if they can afford it or just approach the vendor 
directly for loan stuff.  It'd be nice if LinuxAudio.org helped with this 
process rather than tried to impose a regime to it - that's probably not what 
you meant but that's what it sounds like.

R