[tug-board] Dante's offer of a Sun computer (Was: texlive machine)

[Sebastian Rahtz]

jett@us.ibm.com writes:

  > purchase a computer for the development of TeX Live. Volker Schaa
  > mentioned that Dante had offered a Sun workstation to the team
  > approx. 18 months ago.

really??? speaking as TeX Live, I do not recall this at all! I expect
its my memory at fault. But obviously I am very happy to hear it
now. The generosity of Dante remains unsurpassed...

  > The machine is still available at the
  > university computing center if we want it. This sounds like a generous
  > offer, and would free up our discretionary funds for other development
  > projects*.  Unless the TL team has some objection, I would like to
  > suspend the idea of purchasing a new machine and ask them to contact
  > Volker to work out the details. Thank you to the members of Dante!

Since Karl has been thinking about this most actively, maybe he and
Volker could discuss the administrative details of such an
arrangement? Some points that strike me immediately are

 - who would do system administration of the machine?
 - can we register it in the tug.org domain?
 - is the usage condoned by the host university? (I say this because
    my official request to house such a machine at Oxford threw up
    considerably legal and security issues)
 - is it understood that the machine would provide interactive access
    to a variety of people for building things, and tinkering with the 
    master build tree?
 - one of the reasons for the machine was to provide a 
    backup CD burning facility. I presume Sun's do not support CD
    writers?

Sebastian