[Foundation-l] [announcement] new staff member in business development

[George Herbert]

On 5/20/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Alison Wheeler wrote:
> >>On 20/05/07, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> >>>Leasing servers instead of purchasing
> >>>them is one factor which should help a great deal.
> >>>
> >Leasing equipment is what you do when you need the option to be able to
> >cancel it should trading conditions turn against you and you no longer
> >need the equipment (which is not the case with WMF - we *know* that our
> >usage will continue to increase not decrease) -or- you want to be able to
> >mark down the lease / interest payments against your tax liability, again
> >which does not apply to WMF.
> >
> Yes and no.  Leasing companies like to bind their clients for the life
> of the contract whether or not you need the equipment.  Having an option
> to cancel on short notice (30 days or less) will likely imply higher
> monthly payments.  ... but then I don't like leasing in either event.

There are situations where leasing is a clear net win.  One of them is
an organization with no capital of note, but a steady income (or
donations) stream over time - you can get many more servers earlier by
leasing than you could by paying as you go, though the cost per server
over a long time period is higher.  Assuming that the organization is
a growing going concern, then the servers/time curve can be plotted
versus fraction of the organization's total budget going in to those
servers, for periods of order of the lease lifetime, and see what the
overall impact is.

On a tangental note, I've been involved in volunteer organizations
that lived by computer hardware donations (UC Berkeley Open Computing
Facility).  How much volunteer or foundation efforts go into trying to
get freebies from vendors now?  This might be highly useful...


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com