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

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

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 125 posts

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

#111

Post by arghwhat »

weinzierl wrote: post #62
arghwhat wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)…

Your expectations of what you wanted from Hetzner has nothing to do with their professionalism. They most certainly acted with outmost professionalism given the situation you describe, and the behavior to be expected from any hosting provider.

I get your frustration in the situation, but even if it would have been helpful to you, it would be extremely unprofessional for a hosting provider to invervene in the operations of its customers unless the customer violates the Terms of Service (an agreement you have no part in), a court order is made, or law enforcement makes a legally supported demand. Random legal notices sent by mail from strangers are not on this list, but could lead to Hetzner evaluating if a ToS violation is in effect that must be resolved.

If the customer is a business, it could be that they have breached the Impressum laws. It would have helped you if they had the impressum, but until legal action is taken it remains undecided if there is a violation, and if there was the consequence would be that the customer is liable for a written warning and in some cases a fine, as decided by the relevant authorities or a court of law.

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

#112

Post by 1970-01-01 »

kazen44 wrote: post #99
1970-01-01 wrote: post #73

>Both services have largely depended on free server resources ... Running on 'large donations' is not a viable strategy for any long-term goal. Perhaps its time for Linux to consider running a tiny datacenter of its very own to both dog-feed itself and give itself extra momentum or inertia from donation stall-out? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food

so, the linux foundation (or torvalds himself, whatever) should run a entire datacenter right now? You know running an anctual datacenter with all its cooling ,storage, networking and power requirements is a full time job for several people right? Why not put bare metal in someplace which already does that for far cheaper and better?

Saying it's far cheaper without actual numbers is not saying anything. 10 years in a DC is 14% cheaper than going in with a provider. This donation money can simply be better spent if long term goals are considered.

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

#113

Post by FuriouslyAdrift »

justinclift wrote: post #108
FuriouslyAdrift wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could host all of that on a single small VM or physical server.

Not their GitLab setup. GitLab is a resource hog, and from what I understand their setup is fairly well used.

I run a gitlab setup for an decent sized enterprise and it only needs 2 VMs hosted locally.

Small by on premise enterprise standards is 4-16 cores and 128GB of RAM.

Our big VMs have 64 cores and 1TB of RAM (db servers).

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

#114

Post by hirako2000 »

rglullis wrote: post #30
hirako2000 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VPS business is very different than the "cloud" space. Yes yes there are cloud features now offered by VPS providers, but they are add ons to chase demand, they aren't positioning their offering to appeal to users wanting a comprehensive suite of services on the platform. Managed databases, SMTP as a service, deployment as a service etc etc etc. For that reasons market rates are different. For Hetzner to bump their p…

Of course they are not in the hyperscaler space, but they are far from being "just" a VPS provider. Their cloud always had on-demand, per-hour billing of servers and block storage volumes, all very easy to manage and provision via their API. Recently they got into object storage space. They even provide a switch to connect their cloud servers with a dedicated one, so you can have, e.g, a beefy GPU server running a LL…

OVH or to hundreds of other less known infra providers.

The barrier to entry for these providers is simply, "low". So margins got to be low.

The thing that holds Hetzner and the likes is you can't purchase a package, follow the setup instructions to make cross disciplines engineering departments. It is no wonder Amazon, Google and Microsoft built a comprehensive cloud. They were in the engineering business.

It doesn't imply Hetzner aren't doing a stunning job at what they do or that running an infrastructure farm is a walk in the park.

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

#115

Post by rangerelf »

freedomben wrote: post #69
rangerelf wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

True, but the spirit of the law died a long time ago, and the vision originally created by the founders has been distorted and "mythified" in favor of the desires and vices of monied interests.

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

#116

Post by thatSteveFan »

loganmarchione wrote: post #43

So far, the Equinix Metal shutdown affects Freedesktop, Alpine, WireGuard, and Flathub. Why can't these organizations use VMs? Is there something special about bare-metal services, or has Equinix not offered their VM service to these organizations?

Possible I'm just not remembering the history right, but I think this is from when "Equinix metal" was packet.com. I think this is a handshake deal they had from before they were bought, and it's going away as packet.com becomes more integrated into Equinix.

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

#117

Post by weinzierl »

arghwhat wrote: post #111
weinzierl wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)…

Your expectations of what you wanted from Hetzner has nothing to do with their professionalism. They most certainly acted with outmost professionalism given the situation you describe, and the behavior to be expected from any hosting provider. I get your frustration in the situation, but even if it would have been helpful to you, it would be extremely unprofessional for a hosting provider to invervene in the operatio…

I disagree. For one thing I think you misinterpret the legal situation. This is Germany, the provider is on the hook. Secondly, you do not have insight into the communication and I won't share it but I assure you their conduct was unprofessional.

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

#118

Post by weinzierl »

Hetzner_OL wrote: post #109
weinzierl wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Hi there, would you mind giving me the abuse ID for this case. (When someone creates an abuse report with us, our confirmation email includes an abuse ID in the subject line.) If you still have that, and you would like me to ask a colleague about this case, please let me know. --Katie, Hetzner Online

To the best of my recollection I was never assigned or at least told one. I was not a customer so when my contact attempts were not ignored or answered with boilerplate, I was asked for my customer details, which I could not provide. No customer details, no support.

The channels to reach you were pretty limited and hard to find when I tried. I assure you, I tried everything short of getting a lawyer to send you paper mail.

I still have the communication history in my archives, but it would be a little effort to dig it out.

EDIT: Found the documentation. My first complaints were in March 2011. At some point I got assigned an abuse ID MU-000B0F55-1:18. In May the issue was still unresolved.

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

#120

Post by arghwhat »

weinzierl wrote: post #117
arghwhat wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your expectations of what you wanted from Hetzner has nothing to do with their professionalism. They most certainly acted with outmost professionalism given the situation you describe, and the behavior to be expected from any hosting provider. I get your frustration in the situation, but even if it would have been helpful to you, it would be extremely unprofessional for a hosting provider to invervene in the operatio…

I disagree. For one thing I think you misinterpret the legal situation. This is Germany, the provider is on the hook. Secondly, you do not have insight into the communication and I won't share it but I assure you their conduct was unprofessional.

The provider may be on the hook of legal consequences from authorities *if" their customer is a business offering services in Germany.

Nothing that would involve you as a third-party individual.

Post reply on HN