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Fosshost Is Shutting Down

fosshost.org

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Re: Fosshost Is Shutting Down

#41

Post by Fordec »

samip537 wrote: post #13
rco8786 wrote: post #3

So curious about the mysterious backstory here. Considering "The Radix Project" appears to be doing the exact same thing that Fosshost is/was.

Yes, but Fosshost's bitfall is that one singular person is the only person with access to critical things, like the bank and thus is the only person able to pay our bills despite having money there or there should be. The Radix Project is trying to learn from our mistakes and do them better so one doesn't face a similar issue due to a singular person having too much control.

I'd be quite interested to hear the Radix Projects governance plans to prevent a future single point of failure again. Not being able to contact the bill payer on the last project isn't helplessness, it's a failure of the created organizational structures to have planned redundancy, succession and legal accountability.

Re: Fosshost Is Shutting Down

#42

Post by maxbond »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #34
choult wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like you're a UK CIC, which means you're regulated like a company, and your CEO/Director has statutory responsibilities. If he is failing to dispense his duties, he could be struck off as a company director in future. He incorporated a Limited company called Fosshosts Projects Ltd. last year, on his own. It'll be struck off in the next two months due to failure to file. He also has another company currently in…

Can anyone file a complaint for authorities to investigate? It sounds like embezzlement of organizational funds might be a possibility and it warrants whomever oversees non profits in the jurisdiction asking some questions.

It's just as likely they're having a mental health crisis of some sort (in my experience this is generally why people on the Internet go nonresponsive), I'd really encourage people not to call the cops on people in a situation they can't understand or get eyes on. It can make a bad situation much, much worse.

It's even entirely possible for both things to be true, eg, for someone to have a medical crisis in their family, which leads to a series of desperate decisions including misappropriating the funds (I recall a former HN user who did a Kickstarter that ended this way, where they had an issue paying rent and a mental health crisis while they were trying to deliver on their Kickstarter - I don't think they've been active online since, further isolating them from their community and support network). Would law enforcement help that situation? Absolutely not, even if the money was recovered it probably wouldn't be worth it.

Re: Fosshost Is Shutting Down

#43

Post by toomuchtodo »

maxbond wrote: post #42
toomuchtodo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can anyone file a complaint for authorities to investigate? It sounds like embezzlement of organizational funds might be a possibility and it warrants whomever oversees non profits in the jurisdiction asking some questions.

It's just as likely they're having a mental health crisis of some sort (in my experience this is generally why people on the Internet go nonresponsive), I'd really encourage people not to call the cops on people in a situation they can't understand or get eyes on. It can make a bad situation much, much worse. It's even entirely possible for both things to be true, eg, for someone to have a medical crisis in their fam…

I mean no offense to those having a mental health crisis, it happens (I have had one myself), but that also doesn't mean a non profit should have its funds walked off with (regardless of why). I've reported non profits to the IRS in the US when it appeared they might not be entirely above board, and I never felt like I was "calling the cops" in the same way I would where they're going to break down someone's front door; it's asking people who are tasked with oversight to do their job.

Unequivocally, I hope this person gets whatever help they need if they need help, regardless of the outcome of this non profit.

Re: Fosshost Is Shutting Down

#44

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

nickelpro wrote: post #12

This is exactly no-name "FOSS" non-profits are a bad choice for community organizing. There's really no reason not to host on industry-standard free hosting, ie Github or Gitlab.

> There's really no reason not to host on industry-standard free hosting, ie Github or Gitlab.

Eh, I can understand not wanting to be at Microsoft's mercy. And ideology oriented projects are likely to take issue with hosting on a platform that is not itself open source.

Re: Fosshost Is Shutting Down

#45

Post by TheBrokenRail »

nickelpro wrote: post #12

This is exactly no-name "FOSS" non-profits are a bad choice for community organizing. There's really no reason not to host on industry-standard free hosting, ie Github or Gitlab.

Yeah, GitHub definitely has its issues. But I can be fairly certain that GitHub's CEO isn't going to suddenly go AWOL and have GitHub lose all funding.

Re: Fosshost Is Shutting Down

#46

Post by ericd »

throwawaysleep wrote: post #20
nickelpro wrote: post #12

This is exactly no-name "FOSS" non-profits are a bad choice for community organizing. There's really no reason not to host on industry-standard free hosting, ie Github or Gitlab.

As an outsider, using FOSS in general for anything important seems like a bad choice unless there is a giant tech firm behind it like React with Meta. It is generally so fragile as it depends on so few people.

If anything, I think commercial is much riskier to have as a core dependency - they can unilaterally change the deal on you, and if they decide to stop supporting your use case, you’re completely SOL (I’ve had a couple of very close calls with this). With open source, you can keep it running yourself, because you have the source, and you always have the option to patch it.

Re: Fosshost Is Shutting Down

#47

Post by sacnoradhq »

XCSme wrote: post #2

I never heard of Fosshost, but based on the name it was supposed to provide free hosting for open-source projects. What was the plan to sustain it?

Wishful thinking perhaps.

This is the problem of inherently unsustainable, poorly-governed, amateur operations: they're houses of cards waiting to fall apart.

If someone wants hosting, then pay for real VPS or colo. Electricity, rack space, and cooling are usually the limiting factors rather than data transit.

Re: Fosshost Is Shutting Down

#48

Post by svnpenn »

Kenji wrote: post #38
svnpenn wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's really no reason not to host on industry-standard free hosting, ie Github GitHub will autoban accounts that post certain content. For example, I had an account for three years, with hundreds of stars across different repos. I pushed an M3U8 file containing content that GitHub didn't like for some reason, boom, account dead. No warning, not even an email with explanation. Every single issue or comment that I…

Isn't M3U8 simply a playlist? What could you possibly put in a playlist to warrant that?

URLs from tv.apple.com, paramountplus.com, roku.com. Although to be fair, most (all?) of those URLs expire after one hour or so, so its purely to test parsing the playlist files

Re: Fosshost Is Shutting Down

#49

Post by bombcar »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #44
nickelpro wrote: post #12

This is exactly no-name "FOSS" non-profits are a bad choice for community organizing. There's really no reason not to host on industry-standard free hosting, ie Github or Gitlab.

> There's really no reason not to host on industry-standard free hosting, ie Github or Gitlab. Eh, I can understand not wanting to be at Microsoft's mercy. And ideology oriented projects are likely to take issue with hosting on a platform that is not itself open source.

Microsoft at least is the devil you know. It’s like the problems with staying on Musk’s Twitter are known - but some random mastadon server could have a literal who in charge; who could do anything (or disappear as Thomas the CEO seems to have done - check Sodor mayhap).

Re: Fosshost Is Shutting Down

#50

Post by maxbond »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #43
maxbond wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just as likely they're having a mental health crisis of some sort (in my experience this is generally why people on the Internet go nonresponsive), I'd really encourage people not to call the cops on people in a situation they can't understand or get eyes on. It can make a bad situation much, much worse. It's even entirely possible for both things to be true, eg, for someone to have a medical crisis in their fam…

I mean no offense to those having a mental health crisis, it happens (I have had one myself), but that also doesn't mean a non profit should have its funds walked off with (regardless of why). I've reported non profits to the IRS in the US when it appeared they might not be entirely above board, and I never felt like I was "calling the cops" in the same way I would where they're going to break down someone's front do…

I understand you didn't feel that way, but I think maybe you should do a thought experiment of what "doing their job" would mean? Once those events are set in motion, you can't control how they unfold or predict the outcome; even if that person didn't do the thing you were worried about, law enforcement may well find some reason to antagonize or imprison them.

I'd encourage people not to contact any law enforcement entity of any kind if they don't have a really solid understanding of the situation. Consider this story from a few weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33626670 where someone called the cops because they were concerned that they saw a child walking alone, and the mother ended up going to jail. That wasn't the intention of the person who called the police; but once you invite law enforcement into someone else's life, you have no idea what they will do and you have no power to recall them. 'pessimizer relayed a similar experience yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33836312

I honestly encourage everyone to consider whether letting it go is the best thing to do in any given situation. Someone might've stolen money? Contacting law enforcement probably won't get it back. An organization is dissolved? We can form it again, with a structure that ensures a higher bus number. These are things we can control, and where we can predict the outcome.

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