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Popular Linux orgs Freedesktop and Alpine Linux are scrambling for new webhost

arstechnica.com

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Re: Popular Linux orgs Freedesktop and Alpine Linux are scrambling for new webhost

#61

Post by timewizard »

johnklos wrote: post #55
mauricio wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the article? There are large storage and bandwidth requirements.

Yes, I did, of course. Storage is MUCH cheaper when you colo, and bandwidth requirements are a large part of why you colocate instead of just running servers out of an office building that has at least two upstream connections. I'm really curious what you think they're using now. Certainly you read the article... It says they're using bare metal servers. That's basically colo where the provider owns, but doesn't cont…

> Storage is MUCH cheaper

Probably because it's not redundant or automatically backed up at any interval. The worst days of my life have been during hardware failures at colos.

Re: Popular Linux orgs Freedesktop and Alpine Linux are scrambling for new webhost

#62

Post by weinzierl »

arghwhat wrote: post #57
weinzierl wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41360708

You're linking this everywhere, but it has absolutely zero relevance. Your beef is not with Hetzner, but whoever decided to run the service. Unless the customer violates local legislation or the hosting providers ToS, the appropriate action is to leave the service running, be it AWS, GCP or Hetzner. I would quite frankly have been very disappointed with them if they had done anything in response to you request.

There is no beef, just evidence that they do to run their service as professionally as other more established providers, which was the original argument and premise of the discussion.

Hetzner is German company and subject to German law. The website they were hosting did not have the (in Germany) mandatory legal notice (Impressum) or any contact details. This shifts the responsibility to the provider (Providerhaftung). Ignoring legal requirements is hardly professional.

Also I would like to note that I did neither request them to give me their customer's details nor to shut down the site. All I wanted was them to work with their customer to have the offending image removed.

Also I am convinced the porn image was not malice but an accident. The scraper replaced all profile images with ones they probably scraped from a forum. I was just unlucky to get a very indecent one.

Had Hetzner collaborated I'm pretty sure this could have been resolved in no time.

Re: Popular Linux orgs Freedesktop and Alpine Linux are scrambling for new webhost

#63

Post by weinzierl »

IntelMiner wrote: post #37
weinzierl wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41360708

How is this Hetzner's fault (or concern?) "Hey your customer is hosting a website with random pictures on it. One of them of me is unflattering. Please make them fix it"

They were hosting a StackOverflow copy, which is OK because of Creative Commons. All my answers were still under my name as it should be.

The only difference to the original was my profile picture, which was an explicit porn image.

For several weeks everyone searching for my name or my StackOverflow answers saw that. I'm glad that I was not looking for a job at the time.

I exhausted all possibilities on all channels to rectify this situation short of using a lawyer. I put a lot of effort into getting things in order and seriously considered going the legal route but ultimately decided against it mainly because courts are hit and miss here when it comes to reputation damage of regular individuals as opposed to companies or celebrities.

EDIT: I should have answered your question how this is Hetzner's fault more directly. The website they were hosting did not have the (in Germany) mandatory legal notice (Impressum) or any contact details. This shifts the responsibility to the provider (Providerhaftung). Also I would like to note that I did neither request them to give me their customer's details nor to shut down the site. All I wanted was them to work with their customer to have the offending image removed.

Also I am convinced the porn image was not malice but an accident. The scraper replaced all profile images with ones they probably scraped from a forum. I was just unlucky to get a very indecent one. Had Hetzner collaborated I'm pretty sure this could have been resolved in no time.

Re: Popular Linux orgs Freedesktop and Alpine Linux are scrambling for new webhost

#64

Post by rangerelf »

freedomben wrote: post #46
rwmj wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RISC-V International moved from California (IIRC?) to Switzerland for basically this reason.

It's shocking and saddening to think one might need to change from the United States to some other country in order to seek freedom. But here we are

The USA being "Free" has mostly been a myth. It's "Free" if you're a member of the owner class, else you're freedom is subject to the whims of politicians and the wealthy. Aristocracy, really.

Re: Popular Linux orgs Freedesktop and Alpine Linux are scrambling for new webhost

#65

Post by martinsnow »

CursedSilicon wrote: post #40
martinsnow wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Red hat contribute a lot but they don't pay well. I believe their finances are tight.

Red Hat's gambit has always been to hire engineers to do good work on Linux broadly, in many areas. As opposed to just dropping crates full of money at random on projects Of course they still get tarred and feathered with the "Red Hat wants to control Linux! " brush because they...contribute the bulk of development to projects like GNOME

I've nothing against red hat and i love that an organization is doing work in the free software space. But it's a choice as an engineer if you want to devote your loss of salary to do honest work.

I do open source in my free time because my family can't sustain itself otherwise. Kudos to all the devs out there working on open software.

Re: Popular Linux orgs Freedesktop and Alpine Linux are scrambling for new webhost

#67

Post by bestham »

zx2c4 wrote: post #36

The WireGuard project is also in the same situation, due to Equinix Metal shutting down. If anybody would like to host us, please reach out to team at wireguard dot com. Thanks!

I guess Tailscale or Mullvad should consider hosting you.

Re: Popular Linux orgs Freedesktop and Alpine Linux are scrambling for new webhost

#68

Post by 565j56j »

gosub100 wrote: post #38
jtrn wrote: post #34

I haven't looked into it, so there might be a good reason, but why isn't peer-to-peer technology utilized more and more for stuff like this? I had hoped that BitTorrent would have made these things a solved problem. I looked into Storj earlier, but it seemed too controlled/unpredictable/centralized. Anybody have some good insights into this?

I think it's the same reason PGP never caught on. The learning curve is just too steep. There are 3 major concepts: understanding how to run the comnand, understanding the idea of public key crypto, and actually using it (i.e. NOT imaging the ISO unless the signature passes). What it needs is something like a torrent client that 1) doesn't let you download unless you supply the expected SHA first, and perhaps 2) that…

The learning curve myth needs to die. It can be solved with good UX but there is no real profit in that so you will never see any company dedicate marketing dollars towards it. So truly decentralized and distributed technologies die because no one wants to spend money to market them for free.

Re: Popular Linux orgs Freedesktop and Alpine Linux are scrambling for new webhost

#69

Post by freedomben »

rangerelf wrote: post #64
freedomben wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's shocking and saddening to think one might need to change from the United States to some other country in order to seek freedom. But here we are

The USA being "Free" has mostly been a myth. It's "Free" if you're a member of the owner class, else you're freedom is subject to the whims of politicians and the wealthy. Aristocracy, really.

Yes agreed, although I think it's worth pointing out that the same is true of virtually every other country as well. Historically at least the US (generally speaking, plenty of people are exceptions throughout the entire history) aspired to freedom and equality, despite falling short.

Re: Popular Linux orgs Freedesktop and Alpine Linux are scrambling for new webhost

#70

Post by stonogo »

dehrmann wrote: post #66

Broader question, but whatever happened to every university with a CS department hosting mirrors of popular distros? I always assumed CDNs replaced them, but seeing this, maybe they didn't.

The MBAs took over. Public service doesn't "generate renevue."
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