that's a really cool idea. i was wondering if the same thing could be pulled off for gaming... but latency would be an issue.... never thought about using the power for DAWs. this is genius. latency wouldn't be an issue if it were just to provide minimum system requirements, etc. :D
one problem we might run into is copyright stuff. maybe we could convince some of the better VST producers to host a few for free as proof of concept?
Yes, we could convince some of them. Another solution is to make our free-distributed-computing DAW but it's another work ^^ We could use open source VSTs to test it too, and then try to convince the more mainstream ones with that.
more on this matter in this document: people.eng.unimelb.edu.au/vkostakos/files/papers/percom17.pdf
re: offloading tasks in an IoT environment. i've dropped a line to the people at ubuntu-studio, we'll see what transpires. :)