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Fosshost Is Shutting Down

fosshost.org

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Re: Fosshost Is Shutting Down

#81

Post by sangnoir »

maxbond wrote: post #79
phendrenad2 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, your sentiment is nice and all, but you're effectively dooming every nonprofit to spectacular dissolution if their CEO decides to not answer the phone. Non-profits, you know, those things that are supposed to serve the public good? But I guess public good is on hold if the CEO goes AWOL.

Am I? This group wasn't able to separate the executive function from treasury function (despite their efforts to do so, it seems like this executive simply refused) - isn't that what caused this mess? If you structure an organization such that there is a single executive who cannot be held accountable - then your bus number is 1. Law enforcement cannot improve your bus number. It doesn't matter if your executive stea…

> Law enforcement cannot improve your bus number [...]eventually something is going to happen to them and then your organization won't be able to recover from it.

In this particular instance, the regulators absolutely can. If the CEO is failing to discharge their duties, they will be disposed of as a company officer, and a new officer will be installed, who can get access to bank accounts and other resources (websites, domains, taxes) backed by the force of law. Not going to regulators is what wil lead to an irrevocable failure in this instance, but it appears the volunteers have already resigned to that fate.

I find rather suspect that the CEO registered a private company with a name similar to the non-profit they already run. I don't have full context, but that alone sets off alarm bells for fraud and/or self-dealing: I'd definitely contact oversight on that basis alone, if I had standing.

Re: Fosshost Is Shutting Down

#82

Post by maxbond »

sangnoir wrote: post #81
maxbond wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I? This group wasn't able to separate the executive function from treasury function (despite their efforts to do so, it seems like this executive simply refused) - isn't that what caused this mess? If you structure an organization such that there is a single executive who cannot be held accountable - then your bus number is 1. Law enforcement cannot improve your bus number. It doesn't matter if your executive stea…

> Law enforcement cannot improve your bus number [...]eventually something is going to happen to them and then your organization won't be able to recover from it. In this particular instance, the regulators absolutely can. If the CEO is failing to discharge their duties, they will be disposed of as a company officer, and a new officer will be installed, who can get access to bank accounts and other resources (website…

They may resolve these issues, but that doesn't improve your bus number. There's no guarantee they will, how long it will take, and whether the money will be there; this doesn't address the root problem. If you did all of that and then carried on in the same manner, you'd run into a similar problem eventually.

There's certainly things I find suspicious about this CEOs actions, I won't deny that. I'm still not going to contact law enforcement about strangers on the Internet.

Re: Fosshost Is Shutting Down

#83

Post by TheBrokenRail »

maxbond wrote: post #79
phendrenad2 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, your sentiment is nice and all, but you're effectively dooming every nonprofit to spectacular dissolution if their CEO decides to not answer the phone. Non-profits, you know, those things that are supposed to serve the public good? But I guess public good is on hold if the CEO goes AWOL.

Am I? This group wasn't able to separate the executive function from treasury function (despite their efforts to do so, it seems like this executive simply refused) - isn't that what caused this mess? If you structure an organization such that there is a single executive who cannot be held accountable - then your bus number is 1. Law enforcement cannot improve your bus number. It doesn't matter if your executive stea…

> there is a single executive who cannot be held accountable

I mean, they can be held accountable. That's what law enforcement is for, to hold these people and firms accountable.

Re: Fosshost Is Shutting Down

#84

Post by Thorrez »

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…

>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 someone - each of us commits dozens of these "crimes" regularly, without realizing it).

I think the ideal solution to this would be to work on fixing the system, not avoiding contact with the system. Hold police accountable for violating people's rights. Remove laws that don't need to be enforced, and consistently enforce ones that do need to be enforced.

>When you give them that invitation, they will make the absolute most of the opportunity.

When my car's window was broken and my work laptop was stolen, I reported it to the police and they didn't seem to do anything besides enter it into a database. I even have the thief's blood, but the police didn't want it.

Re: Fosshost Is Shutting Down

#85

Post by maxbond »

TheBrokenRail wrote: post #83
maxbond wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I? This group wasn't able to separate the executive function from treasury function (despite their efforts to do so, it seems like this executive simply refused) - isn't that what caused this mess? If you structure an organization such that there is a single executive who cannot be held accountable - then your bus number is 1. Law enforcement cannot improve your bus number. It doesn't matter if your executive stea…

> there is a single executive who cannot be held accountable I mean, they can be held accountable. That's what law enforcement is for, to hold these people and firms accountable.

We can certainly create much more effective systems of accountability than having a single point of failure who we threaten with legal action to keep them honest (just splitting up executive and treasury functions is already a huge improvement), and like I mentioned, that doesn't defend us against buses.

I think we can all agree that empirically, this single point of failure plan didn't work.

Re: Fosshost Is Shutting Down

#86

Post by sangnoir »

maxbond wrote: post #82
sangnoir wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Law enforcement cannot improve your bus number [...]eventually something is going to happen to them and then your organization won't be able to recover from it. In this particular instance, the regulators absolutely can. If the CEO is failing to discharge their duties, they will be disposed of as a company officer, and a new officer will be installed, who can get access to bank accounts and other resources (website…

They may resolve these issues, but that doesn't improve your bus number. There's no guarantee they will, how long it will take, and whether the money will be there; this doesn't address the root problem. If you did all of that and then carried on in the same manner, you'd run into a similar problem eventually. There's certainly things I find suspicious about this CEOs actions, I won't deny that. I'm still not going t…

> They may resolve these issues, but that doesn't improve your bus number

You're conflating negligence/dereliction of duty and bus-factor-of-one here, while Fosshost suffers from both, they are not the same thing.

Regulators can absolutely solve the former, but not the latter. The volunteers can solve the latter, but only after the former is resolved. I don't see why you assume why a new CEO would resist relinquishing all treasury duties.

Re: Fosshost Is Shutting Down

#87

Post by n3storm »

samip537 wrote: post #5
dale_glass wrote: post #4

There's a serious lack of useful information here. "Due to circumstances outside of the control of the Fosshost volunteers, we are now in a situation where we cannot guarantee our servers will stay online, and in fact expect them to go offline shortly." and in the link: "I'm expecting the BOS datacenter to go offline in the very near future." And in their Twitter profile, they seem to be a non-profit. I presume then…

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

Re: Fosshost Is Shutting Down

#88

Post by maxbond »

sangnoir wrote: post #86
maxbond wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They may resolve these issues, but that doesn't improve your bus number. There's no guarantee they will, how long it will take, and whether the money will be there; this doesn't address the root problem. If you did all of that and then carried on in the same manner, you'd run into a similar problem eventually. There's certainly things I find suspicious about this CEOs actions, I won't deny that. I'm still not going t…

> They may resolve these issues, but that doesn't improve your bus number You're conflating negligence/dereliction of duty and bus-factor-of-one here, while Fosshost suffers from both, they are not the same thing. Regulators can absolutely solve the former, but not the latter. The volunteers can solve the latter, but only after the former is resolved. I don't see why you assume why a new CEO would resist relinquishin…

> You're conflating negligence/dereliction of duty and bus-factor-of-one here, while Fosshost suffers from both, they are not the same thing.

I appreciate the distinction, but they're certainly related. We can see that because we can achieve the same result with a bus accident as with dereliction, and that addressing the dereliction without addressing the bus factor will result in a repeat of the problem.

> I don't see why you assume why a new CEO would resist relinquishing all treasury duties.

I don't, that was a thought experiment to illustrate the point that addressing the dereliction does not address the root cause.

Re: Fosshost Is Shutting Down

#89

Post by kelnos »

maxbond wrote: post #77
TheBrokenRail wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a mental health crisis should not mean that you're free of consequences. It's not like random people are driving up to their house to harass them, they're reporting them to a regulatory body who will investigate themselves and prosecute if needed. And if they are having a mental health crisis, they should be able to plea insanity. All is this is compounded by the fact that, at least according to another commen…

> It's not like random people are driving up to their house to harass them When you direct law enforcement to investigate someone, you should anticipate this as a strong possibility. > And if they are having a mental health crisis, they should be able to plea insanity. I think the bar for this is much higher than having a mental health crisis, and that even if successful it won't result in you maintaining your libert…

I absolutely agree with you that police often make things worse than they need to be. But we can't just allow people to do bad things, shrug, and move on. Even if the CEO of Fosshost has a legitimate excuse for what's going on, taking no action at all just tells the true sociopaths among us that they can get away with whatever they want, because people will assume there's a reasonable explanation, and not involve authorities.

That's not an outcome I'm comfortable with either. And I am very sympathetic to your statement in another subthread about preferring 1000 guilty people going free over even 1 innocent person going to jail. But where's the threshold? How about 10,000 guilty people? 100,000? A million? As much as it pains me to say this, at some point we do have to accept that innocent people will get caught up in the system. Because if we refuse to take action against any guilty people due to a fear of hurting the innocent, then the guilty people will just take more and more advantage of that, until society itself is untenable. I don't think you're directly advocating for a breakdown in society, but I think that's the eventual outcome of your policy.

Don't get me wrong, the system as it is... is terrible. It needs boatloads of reform. There are many issues that police are ill equipped to handle, and yet end up handling -- poorly -- anyway, because there is no one else empowered and funded to handle those situations. Even the best police officers can handle situations outside their training poorly, and unfortunately there are many police officers who are very far from being the best, to put it mildly.

I don't have solutions here. Policing is incredibly broken, and I don't really know what will fix it. But I don't think a productive response to that is to just let people get away with doing bad things, regardless of their intentions or their personal situation.

To the actual matter at hand, posts like this one -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33849353 -- lead me to believe that the CEO was intentionally doing something shady. No, I don't have proof of that, but I don't think anyone is going to figure out what was really going on without involving some sort of authorities. At some point you just have to judge for yourself if you believe someone was acting maliciously or not, and take whatever action you think is best. The people working on Fosshost are certainly in a much better position to do that that than we are, here.

Re: Fosshost Is Shutting Down

#90

Post by maxbond »

Thorrez wrote: post #84
maxbond wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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…

> I think the ideal solution to this would be to work on fixing the system, not avoiding contact with the system. Hold police accountable for violating people's rights. Remove laws that don't need to be enforced, and consistently enforce ones that do need to be enforced.

This is a fair point. Personally I don't believe this reform is possible, as I believe that the nature of police powers is such that they will always become abusive and insulate themselves from accountability. Regardless, in the same way you go to war with the army you have, when you contact law enforcement, it's the law enforcement that you have and not the law enforcement you believe should exist.

> When my car's window was broken and my work laptop was stolen, I reported it to the police and they didn't seem to do anything besides enter it into a database.

I'm sorry that happened. Once my laptop with full disk encryption was stolen - while it was booted and asleep (thus defeating the full disk encryption), and I felt like such a fool.

I meant this more as a mental model of what the worst case scenario you should anticipate is. Because we simply cannot predict how law enforcement will respond on a spectrum of not giving you the time of day to showing up with their weapons drawn, we have to consider whether the most extreme scenario is acceptable before contacting them.

For what it's worth, I believe we should have a more diverse array of emergency services, who can be contacted directly, so that you have more control over what kind of response you are requesting.

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