Fossbox Projects

Community Cloud Project

This project is a collaboration between Fossbox and GoodGNUs in Manchester. The idea originally came out of Technology & Social Action/PRADSA and was first floated at the T&SA/NCVO open day in 2009. The idea was to try to develop a community-based cloud facility which would be compatible with Amazon's EC2 but completely community owned and controlled.

A community cloud could allow VCS organisations to share applications, collaborate and network on the cloud without worrying about privacy issues. VCS ICT providers would be able to offer virtual servers and SaaS eliminating hardware costs, reducing overall costs and also reducing carbon footprint.

There was a lot of interest, so at the Futuresonic Fringe event last Summer, a group was formed to take this forward and an e-list started up. The obvious choice of platform was Ubuntu and Eucalyptus and a controller running Ubuntu Karmic has been set up.

The project is in its early stages and there's a lot to do, so if you're familiar with Ubuntu/EC2 and interested in getting involved or adding a node, subscribe here or contact Fossbox