Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Rackspace to discontinue discounted services for open source projects

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 24 posts

Re: Rackspace to discontinue discounted services for open source projects

#11

Post by rpedela »

ubernostrum wrote: post #9
Chaebixi wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most of these firms will strip the company bare, cut expenses to the bone and try to sell the company to someone else for a profit. While this strategy may work very well for traditional manufacturing firms, I'm highly skeptical of software/tech companies. I don't think it works well for any industry. My understanding is private equity has a really bad track record of ruining the long term future of the business it…

I don't think the parent comment disagrees with you on the effect private equity has on the targeted company. I think the question they were asking was whether a primarily tech company can produce the profits the private equity wants from destroying the company, since tech companies don't have the kinds of assets that, say, a manufacturer does (factories, tools, etc.).

If Rackspace has a decent patent portfolio, then that would be just as valuable as factories, tools, etc if not more valuable.

Re: Rackspace to discontinue discounted services for open source projects

#12

Post by stingraycharles »

pm90 wrote: post #5
moocowtruck wrote: post #2

things must be getting bad at rackspace

Yep. Luckily I left before the acquisition. Every single person in my (ex) 11 person team left for other opportunities, including managers. And it was a pretty awesome team :(. Even the best recruiters left. I mean come on. They're trying to be a support company for other cloud providers. I'm sure there is a market for that kind of service but not sure how much margin there is to be made. I keep saying this but: if y…

> They're trying to be a support company for other cloud providers. I'm sure there is a market for that kind of service but not sure how much margin there is to be made.

I’ve seen that happen at one more big dedicated/colo hosting provider. Once the cloud started catching on with enterprises, they couldn’t resist the consultancy money of helping them in the migrations, and now they’re stuck being dependent on those types of contracts.

It takes a strong spine to resist this type of money, but when you do, make sure to invest it wisely.

Re: Rackspace to discontinue discounted services for open source projects

#14

Post by bdcravens »

stingraycharles wrote: post #12
pm90 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Luckily I left before the acquisition. Every single person in my (ex) 11 person team left for other opportunities, including managers. And it was a pretty awesome team :(. Even the best recruiters left. I mean come on. They're trying to be a support company for other cloud providers. I'm sure there is a market for that kind of service but not sure how much margin there is to be made. I keep saying this but: if y…

> They're trying to be a support company for other cloud providers. I'm sure there is a market for that kind of service but not sure how much margin there is to be made. I’ve seen that happen at one more big dedicated/colo hosting provider. Once the cloud started catching on with enterprises, they couldn’t resist the consultancy money of helping them in the migrations, and now they’re stuck being dependent on those t…

What's interesting is the shift from pushing their own cloud solution.

Re: Rackspace to discontinue discounted services for open source projects

#15

Post by davidkuhta »

PSA for others potentially looking for an off-the-rack solution, here were some of the companies mentioned:

Netlify - See CTO comment above/below https://www.netlify.com/open-source/ [Kubernetes, Docker, React]

BlueHost - https://www.bluehost.com/open-source [Wordpress, Joomla!, Drupal, phpBB, among 80 others]

Linode - https://www.linode.com/sponsorships [23 companies listed]

UpCloud https://www.upcloud.com/pricelist/ (Didn't see an explicit mention of open source projects, but 'Custom' plans exist)

Oregon State University Open Source Lab - http://osuosl.org/ [Apache Software Foundation, the Linux Foundation and Drupal]

OVH - https://www.ovh.com/us/hosting.xml (Didn't see an explicit mention of open source projects)

DigitalOcean - https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/is-there-a-...

vexxhost - https://vexxhost.com/ (Didn't see an explicit mention of open source projects)

Disclaimer: I'm not commercially affiliated with an of these (nor are any of the links 'sponsored'), although I have utilized some of these companies for hosting.

Re: Rackspace to discontinue discounted services for open source projects

#16

Post by masklinn »

calavera wrote: post #10

Hi, CTO of Netlify here, let us know if you need any help moving out docs, websites or any other web property from there, we'll be super happy to help. Projects like Kubernetes, Docker and React are already using our free offering for Open Source.

FWIW ReadTheDocs is probably looking for a new host, though they're a… substantial system:

https://readthedocs.org/sustainability/

> Serve over 20 million pages of documentation a month

> Have 10 servers and serve over 2 TB of documentation a month

> Host over 18,000 projects and support 25,000 users

> Are supported by two dedicated engineers

Re: Rackspace to discontinue discounted services for open source projects

#19

Post by dforrestwilson »

bdcravens wrote: post #14
stingraycharles wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They're trying to be a support company for other cloud providers. I'm sure there is a market for that kind of service but not sure how much margin there is to be made. I’ve seen that happen at one more big dedicated/colo hosting provider. Once the cloud started catching on with enterprises, they couldn’t resist the consultancy money of helping them in the migrations, and now they’re stuck being dependent on those t…

What's interesting is the shift from pushing their own cloud solution.

Eh Amazon won that battle 2 years ago when they inked a partnership.

Re: Rackspace to discontinue discounted services for open source projects

#20

Post by agj »

masklinn wrote: post #16
calavera wrote: post #10

Hi, CTO of Netlify here, let us know if you need any help moving out docs, websites or any other web property from there, we'll be super happy to help. Projects like Kubernetes, Docker and React are already using our free offering for Open Source.

FWIW ReadTheDocs is probably looking for a new host, though they're a… substantial system: https://readthedocs.org/sustainability/ > Serve over 20 million pages of documentation a month > Have 10 servers and serve over 2 TB of documentation a month > Host over 18,000 projects and support 25,000 users > Are supported by two dedicated engineers

Correct, Read the Docs isn't going away, and maintainers certainly don't need to worry about moving their documentation. We'll just be switching hosts before the end of the year.

We actually got hints of the fact that Rackspace was axing their F/OSS program back in May, and have been slowly prodding folks in the Python community about sponsoring hosting since then. Rackspace never confirmed if/when the program was going away, but we were anticipating this since their acquisition.

Post reply on HN