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Fosshost Is Shutting Down

fosshost.org

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Re: Fosshost Is Shutting Down

#111

Post by MaxBarraclough »

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.

edit: I mistook Fosshost for a forge, but they were more like a cloud provider.

SourceForge used to hope everyone would think that way. Fortunately their abusive [0] dominance didn't last.

As well as a general anti-monoculture argument, [1] there's a case to be made that Free and Open Source projects should live on 'forges' which are themselves Free and Open Source. [2][3] Also, in the specific case of GitHub, a lot of people are unhappy about the Copilot project.

Also on this general topic I recommend this hour-long discussion video [4].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SourceForge#Controversies

[1] https://nedbatchelder.com/blog/201405/github_monoculture.htm...

[2] https://drewdevault.com/2022/03/29/free-software-free-infras...

[3] https://ntietz.com/blog/moving-off-github/

[4] https://spacepub.space/w/dPKZMydUMLqEVkK7Kuy4ir

Re: Fosshost Is Shutting Down

#112

Post by MaxBarraclough »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #64

Open source needs sustainable funding models. It's hard to tell what fosshost was and how many people are impacted. It's also unclear what the Radix project is how it will be different/avoid what caused fosshost to shut down.

This is the first I've heard of Fosshost, but from a glance at their twitter: [0]

> Fosshost is a cloud computing platform for the open-source community

Presumably then the Radix project will have similar goals, and it will presumably not serve as a forge, although their website isn't very clear on this point. [1]

[0] https://twitter.com/fosshostorg

[1] https://radixproject.org/about

Re: Fosshost Is Shutting Down

#113

Post by dale_glass »

samip537 wrote: post #18
tomrod wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bank can grant a treasurer access to resources if they are legally obligated to the funds. Has the CEO absconded? This is crazy.

I don't know if the whole thing was ever officially documented, so we don't really have a way to gain control to the bank account. There's two directors remaining, and no board to speak of as they have resigned. All in all, we have tried our best to prevent this, but we cannot anymore. I don't know what's the motive for the CEO to be unresponsive and I don't want to speculate anything, but it's not at all fun for any…

You should really put some of this on your website. You don't have to air out all of the dirty laundry, but some clarity about what went wrong would be very helpful to people just learning about it.

That would also help explain what's Radix about and why they are the alternative you recommend.

Re: Fosshost Is Shutting Down

#114

Post by wartijn_ »

n3storm wrote: post #87
samip537 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are unable to pay for co-location costs, and that's why our servers will go offline as Thomas our CEO is unreacheable. He only has access to bank and thus to funds. Explaination of the DC thing at Github: https://github.com/fosshostorg/fosshost.org/blob/main/src/po... (Other posts can be read from there too.) Post from three months ago regarding state of affairs: https://github.com/fosshostorg/fosshost.org/blob/ma…

horizontal organization 101: more than one member (if not all) should have access to the bank, mobile,water,light,gas contracts

I think they've realized that by now...

Re: Fosshost Is Shutting Down

#115

Post by ajsnigrutin »

fsckboy wrote: post #93
samip537 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are unable to pay for co-location costs, and that's why our servers will go offline as Thomas our CEO is unreacheable. He only has access to bank and thus to funds. Explaination of the DC thing at Github: https://github.com/fosshostorg/fosshost.org/blob/main/src/po... (Other posts can be read from there too.) Post from three months ago regarding state of affairs: https://github.com/fosshostorg/fosshost.org/blob/ma…

in situations like this, if you could use financial help you need to blurt out what the costs are that need to be covered. There's plenty of people with money about, so if you have somebody's attention take advantage of it. I've already clicked a half a dozen link and there's no info. Why make me work so hard? if you are happy it's over, well, that's ok, thanks for volunteering as long as you guys have.

Also probably a bunch of organizations that might be willing to host for free.. if they knew that it was an issue.

Re: Fosshost Is Shutting Down

#116

Post by cornel_io »

maxbond wrote: post #69
imperfect_blue wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of reporting crime is not to receive compensation; it's to create a norm where crime is punished and hence deterred. It's a societal benefit not a personal one. It's not good that miscarriages of justice do happen, but that doesn't change the overall point.

I understand the principle of what you're advocating for, but the unfortunate reality is that miscarriages of justice are the norm and not the exception . I'd put forward another principle; it is better to let 1000 guilty parties go free than to condemn 1 innocent party (and "innocent" here should be taken to include people who are committing a "crime" that is normally tolerated, employed as an excuse to arrest someo…

It sounds like you have a deep (and IMO unjustified and motivated by wrong or weirdly interpreted statistics) hatred of law enforcement, probably from either personal experience or political activism. That's your prerogative, of course, but it's a really fringe position and most people would disagree.

Re: Fosshost Is Shutting Down

#117

Post by XCSme »

sacnoradhq wrote: post #47
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.

This is the main reason why I still don't open-source my commercial projects, even though people ask, "Why would I choose this? There are free alternatives!"; the projects are earning money to sustain themselves and everyone is happy (customers get better support, I can sustainably work on it, going 10 years strong now).

Re: Fosshost Is Shutting Down

#118

Post by SamWhited »

My big concern with this whole thing is that users weren't alerted as far as I can tell. I happened to visit the website for the first time in ages and saw the news, but if I hadn't done that I would never have known until my site went offline (I guess only users on Twitter got notified).

Anyways, alternative suggestions welcome, our open source project has no money for hosting and has a few services outside of our static site that actually need a VPN to run. A small 1CPU 512MB box (or whatever it was) was plenty for us as we're not big, but we can't afford to buy that from anyone and now we're having to scramble to ask related businesses who use our stuff for sponsorship and hope one of them comes through.

Re: Fosshost Is Shutting Down

#119

Post by RF_Savage »

fsckboy wrote: post #93
samip537 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are unable to pay for co-location costs, and that's why our servers will go offline as Thomas our CEO is unreacheable. He only has access to bank and thus to funds. Explaination of the DC thing at Github: https://github.com/fosshostorg/fosshost.org/blob/main/src/po... (Other posts can be read from there too.) Post from three months ago regarding state of affairs: https://github.com/fosshostorg/fosshost.org/blob/ma…

in situations like this, if you could use financial help you need to blurt out what the costs are that need to be covered. There's plenty of people with money about, so if you have somebody's attention take advantage of it. I've already clicked a half a dozen link and there's no info. Why make me work so hard? if you are happy it's over, well, that's ok, thanks for volunteering as long as you guys have.

Money will not help when the CEO with the ability to pay the bills has been AWOL for 6 months.
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