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So, in the background, the owners of the PBC have been working with staff to get the site moved over to a new legal entity and continue operations. This process is moving slowly, but it is moving, with the expectation that we should be able to fully hand off SN in the next month or so. However, the PBC has burned through its cash reserves, and we have an overdue Linode bill as is for $268 USD. I could write more, but the tl;dr, without money, SN will disappear off the Internet.
Most of the subscriptions understandably stopped due to the uncertainty with site ownership and management. However, we're not able to pay the bills with the trickle coming in. At this point, everyone involved has agreed with and are working towards a solution to move SN to a not-for-profit and 501(c)3, but we do need the communities financial support to get there. If we can raise $500 USD via subscriptions, direct donations, or other means, that would keep the site up past May. As such, if you have let your subscription lapse, or otherwise are able to support SN, please do so now.
Any funds raises will be donated to the *new* NFP as soon as it is able to accept funds. We'll run an update if/when we reach our funding goal.
- NCommander
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Wednesday March 06 2024, @11:03PM (7 children)
Done.
QQ: What does the site cost to run? I've never implemented non-trivial hosting outside of enterprise environments so I'm ignorant. (In enterprises everything costs an arm and a leg.)
Thanks!
(Score: 2) by dwilson on Thursday March 07 2024, @02:17AM (3 children)
That's a good question. What does it cost, on a yearly basis? Ballpark range?
I just renewed my subscription, because I hadn't realized it ran out. But damn. $268 USD overdue? Is that.. a month? three months? a year? over a three month period that's... pocket change, for someone in my position. I could help, probably.
- D
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday March 07 2024, @03:50AM (1 child)
I enjoy the community here and it's worth something to me. I should have subscribed long ago. That was an oversight. :(
Anyone know how endowments work? I'm completely ignorant on this topic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 07 2024, @01:33PM
It's time for a new congressional oversight committee.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 07 2024, @06:08AM
Linode charges at the end of the month if you have a good payment history. SN has a past-due bill but let's assume it is their first one. That would mean that the latest bill arrived on March 1st and the maximum bill limit is $50 now. This means Linode will send you a bill whenever charges are $50 or at the end of the month, whichever happens first. We know that $500 lasts until May. Subtract $268 past due for months before March. That leaves $232 for future invoices. Since the bill limit is now $50, Linode will take the infrastructure offline 2 weeks after the unpaid bill is invoiced. $232 divided by 3 months (March, April, and May, with the first half of June coming later) is equal to $77.33, approximately. If you remove taxes and fees around 7.5%, that leaves around $72 a month. Which makes sense because the shared CPU plans are in multiples of $12. So their most-likely server setup at this point is probably 2 4GB boxes ($24 each) and 2 2GB boxes ($12 each). They could probably get it down to less, however, with some creativity, minor code tweaks, or exchanging redundancy for replication (or nothing at all).
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 08 2024, @09:00PM (2 children)
The site never needed $6k+ per year that is for sure!
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday March 09 2024, @09:17AM (1 child)
Actually it probably did, but it does not need it at present. When NCommander did the update in late 2022/ early 2023 he reduced the number of servers that we had, I think by 3. He did this by restructuring where the various software packages were installed. We had separate server backups, 2 separate servers for the database so that a single server loss did not take the site down and for load sharing, Varnish, IRC, email, various management software, a development environment etc so it is not just the 1 database and a bit of Perl that we have to manage.
The server holdings were calculated based on the community size that we had several years previously. The reduction in the amount of hardware that we had with Linode made a significant cost saving. It might be possible to reduce it still further but you have to remember that simply going for a cheaper option might not be the wisest move. You often only get what you pay for. Having a share of a couple of VPS will simply not cut it, nor might the reliability be what is wanted. Certainly the bandwidth is greater than most VPS are offering at a comparable price. The majority do not log in to read the site.
Your implied mismanagement of funds (which has been repeated, perhaps by others, several times elsewhere) is not based on any factual evidence that you can point to, simply an ignorance of how the site was structured. it might have been overkill but the structure was chosen intentionally to achieve a specific aim.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.