Re: Sustainable funding and maintenance for our infrastructure

[Simon Tournier <zimon.toutoune@gmail.com>]

Hi Ricardo, all,

I agree with many words in the thread.

Reading all the messages in the thread, the solution seems to try a mix
of the three options.  We could imagine “buy and host” more exotic
hardware but not a complete data center neither, “rent” for specific
needs and ask for more “sponsor”.

However, the implicit question is a chicken-or-the-egg problem: in order
to know what we would like to invest in, we need to know how much we
would be able to invest; and to know how much, we need to determine for
what.


On Mon, 08 Jul 2024 at 14:02, Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net> wrote:

>>> The various options and back-of-the-envelope estimates we came up with
>>> are as follows:
>>>
>>>   1. Buying and hosting hardware:
>>>       250k€ for hardware
>>>       3k€/month (36k€/year)
>>>
>>>   2. Renting machines (e.g., on Hetzner):
>>>       6k€/month (72k€/year)
>>>
>>>   3. Sponsored:
>>>       get hardware and/or hosting sponsored (by academic institutions or
>>>       companies).

[...]

> Option #2 is rather quick to set up and quick to abandon should we run
> out of money.  It does, however, depend on continuous donations, which
> we are currently unable and possibly even unwilling to solicit.

IMHO, the discussion of any potential option should be coupled with a
“investment plan”.  One without the other is a dead end, for what my
opinion is worth.

Well, because I am in the business of academics, I am able to imagine
some path forward for option #3 (sponsor).  For instance, [1] appears to
me a very good news.  Then, I am a bit clueless* about financing option
#1 or #2 – whatever the amount.  I mean, the first question is how to
secure several k€ or k$ – how much would we be able to secure?

Let assume Guix Foundation would be able to manage the money, the
discussion becomes: considering the current incomings, how do we scale?

Is the project ready to regularly look for incomings and run after them?
From my point of view, it’s easier to get hardware and/or hosting
sponsored by academic institutions or companies than to run by our own
for incomings in order to buy hardware and/or pay hosting.  But as said,
I am biased here. :-)

Then if we have a plan for buying hardware – depending on the amount –
it means we also need a plan to deal with such asset; on the financial
side and on the ecological side.

All in all, the first question in order to prepare the more or less next
years of our infrastructure seems about what appears financially
feasible.  Drawing what is financially doable right now, what would be
doable with work or what is just impossible in the near future, drawing
all this picture appears to me the next move in the discussion.

Other said, with my Guix Foundation hat, my proposal could be to set
this as an objective: polish Guix Foundation for preparing to scale up.


*clueless: Not fully. :-)  For sure, we could opt for crowd-founding or
 some grant here or there.  But still… how much?

Cheers,
simon

1: New North American based Guix Substitute Server, cuirass.genenetwork.org Now Available
"Collin J. Doering" <collin@rekahsoft.ca>
Sat, 06 Jul 2024 19:35:44 -0400
id:871q46ytyn.fsf@rekahsoft.ca
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2024-07
https://yhetil.org/guix/871q46ytyn.fsf@rekahsoft.ca