[luau] HOSEF will make Hawaii better.

[R. Scott Belford]

I want to take a moment to update you on the status of the Hawaii Open 
Source Education Foundation.  The IRS has approved our 501(c)(3) 
application for exemption from income taxes.  For a charitable 
organization, this is a great legitimizer of our noble mission.  While 
Kevin's confirmation has only been by phone so far, I anticipate being 
able to post the documentation in the following 10 days.  If you are 
not familiar with this organization, we have a work-in-process website 
with a reasonable overview at hosef.org.

We had our first organizational meeting a few weeks ago.  We elected 
officers.  Warren is the Chair, Vince is the Vice-Chair, Enrico is the 
Webmaster, Ho'ala is the Public Relations Officer, and I will be the 
Treasurer.  Look for updates to the website reflecting this election 
and some clarifications to our mission.

Twice a week some of us continue to meet at the Stadium Marketplace 
Pricebusters to work on preparing computers for deployment to schools 
and other charitable organizations.  In the best of cases this involves 
simply memtesting machines, documenting the success (or failure) and 
putting the boxen in the done pile.  In not so great cases one machine 
must be salvaged to make another work,  If you are interested in 
learning about hardware, or refining your certification classes, this 
can be a great experience.

At this location we have about 30 tested boxes for thin clients.  We 
have about 30 to 40 untested boxes.  These do not include the macs.  We 
have a demonstration machine running mandrake 9, one running redhat 8, 
one running gnu/debian, and one running the ltsp distribution of linux. 
  These are here for you to play with or experiment with if you want to 
learn more about linux.  We also have several donated hard drives and a 
few fast boxes that will become thin client servers.  If you want to 
learn more about the Linux Terminal Server Project, this is your chance 
to install it, test it, break it, all on equipment that you do not own. 
  Just as long as you learn, we all win.

We have a very nice classroom with desks, a television/vcr, and the 
capacity to do presentations.  From this day onward this space can be 
made available for training.  Ho'ala no longer has to wait for enough 
people to register in order to teach a class.  Now, it can be taught, 
for free, by HOSEF.  You get no certification, but you do get the 
knowledge.  If he is willing, then perhaps some of you will come.  If 
Gary wants to talk about his project, or if Jim wants to talk about 
video archiving, or if Warren wants to talk about whatever, then we 
have the space available.  If you, whoever you are, want to share some 
knowledge about Open Source Software, then please offer to do so.  If 
you want to know something, one of us will offer to teach you.  Please 
do not pass up the opportunity to use this resource.

If you have read this far, perhaps you are interested in all this.  
There are selfish and selfless reasons to help promote the use of Open 
Source Software.  You can make money supporting its use.  Every dollar 
not spent on licensing can be earned by you or spent by your company on 
a local employee.  If you want customization, look no further than the 
source code and your skilled programmer (local or international)  If 
you care about offering our State and Schools a solution to the fiscal 
challenges, this is the chance.

Jeff Zidek has arranged for 1500, not a mis-type, 1500, Pentium 166 
machines from Hickam.  This is likely to be about 30 pallets worth.  
The P166's we have received so far tend to have 3COM 3C905 nics, at 
least 16mb of ram, and pci video cards.  Even if 1/3 are junk, we are 
still talking about an amazing quantity of hardware.  Regretfully, if I 
was able to find the space to store all of these, the few of us 
volunteering our time would be overwhelmed.  You can help.  We can use 
your help.  Perhaps you or your business could help store them.  We 
have people who want computers.  We have computers to give them.  We 
have enough resources to create the revenue to buy servers for them.  
We even have the hardware to build light but effective Terminal 
Servers.  We just need some of your volunteer time to make it all 
happen.

scott