[Consortium] Hardware loan policy

[Daniel James]

> But coordinating between counties and projects is a lot of work for
> a single person. 

I meant one named person per piece of hardware, rather than one person 
for all hardware - the latter approach could cause problems if a 
third party did not return the hardware.

> 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 

Sure - I meant that people would volunteer to be responsible for a 
particular device, not some kind of centralised allocation system. 
I'd guess that some devices would suit certain developers' skills and 
interests more than others - there's not much point sending a 
controller keyboard to a developer who isn't working on MIDI stuff, 
for example.

> 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

Quite - but potentially these could be expensive pieces of hardware 
loaned to developers releasing 'free as in beer' software. They may 
also be pre-production models unavailable in the shops, or equipment 
bartered for software support.

> or just approach the vendor directly for loan 
> stuff.

I think that would be unlikely to succeed if lots of different 
developers were making competing claims for the same kit.  

> It'd be nice if LinuxAudio.org helped with this process 
> rather than tried to impose a regime to it

I did mean the hardware that the consortium was offered as a group, 
not to interfere with relationships that individual members have (or 
would like to have) with manufacturers.

Cheers

Daniel