Keller, Tim wrote:
I don't see where hosting would much of a problem at all. The trick is to charge for it. WLUG members who wanted an account on the box would each pay in a couple bucks a month and that money would be used to pay to host the box.
I'd hope that would be Plan B. Obviously, it won't be free. A worst-case, most limiting scenario would be using a virtual private server/UML arrangement, though that would only scale so far. Still, at $20 or so per month, I don't think every user would have to commit. (I realize that places rather substantial limits on the size of the thing.)
If somebody had a decent speakeasy type (allows servers, has decent bandwidth) account, that money could be used to pay the electric bill for the box(s), add capacity, etc. Then you host an webpage,distro respository,irc channel, etc. off of it.
That's actually an option I hadn't thought of, but I suppose it could be used for prototyping. As to the other features, that's where the design goals would be critical. "Feature creep" could be deadly! - Bob