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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: -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.