Shell access

[Roscoe]

[Attempt 2 at avoiding moderator approval]

Hey all,

When I was going through uni, I was greatly disappointed that the uni
only had Windows boxes. I didn't really want to bring my own computer
to and from uni everyday. There was a simple solution, SSH into a
decent host. But, try as I might all the paid shell providers seemed
quite seedy, and the free ones (like metawire) had a few issues -
mostly due to the kind of people they attracted.

I never did find a decent shell provider, but I never forgot the
frustration involved in trying. I ended up with a Linode VPS.

Now I've had an idea I've been toying with for a while, and that is to
provide a host fellows can SSH into. I hope this will mean we won't
hit the problems of typical shell hosts, as the user base hopefully is
a reasonable and honorable group.

The rules would be simple, but hopefully easy enough to follow:
- No non-free content/software*.
- Don't get me in trouble.
- Don't interfere with the services provided to other people.

The requirements for joining would also be simple:
- FSFE email address.
- OpenPGP key.
- Agreement to the rules.

I have a budget of about $50 per month for this, which would get two
Linodes with 512MB of RAM, 16GB of storage; or one with 1GB of RAM and
32GB of storage.
I'm pretty open to other ideas, but Linode's value proposition is
pretty good. And it's based on xen, which is at least FLOSS

Of course no one may care, but I was thinking if I got 10 people keen
I'd go for it :)

Sound like a good idea? Crap idea? Suggestions?

Regards,

-- Roscoe