[HCoop-Discuss] The future of HCoop

[Franklin Gordon Bynum]

Indeed, it seems we are at a crisis point.  My websites have become so unresponsive that I recently, sadly, got a dumbed-down pedestrian hosting account elsewhere where I use cPanel to administer my wordpress blogs.  <shudder>

This group is something really special to me, and I know it is to many of you.  It's not just a host, it's a community.  I added a domain for my new law practice and Davor sent along a congratulatory note when he added it.  Justin Leitgeb, someone I never met, went from a name on the listserv to a face on the train to a friend down the block after he moved to Brooklyn.

This isn't about cheap hosting.  It's about opting-out of the ad-saturated, overpriced, over-hyped, for-profit corporate hosting game.  (And for that matter, the high-end, overpriced, for-profit hosting game.)  

Ultimately, this co-op is about ownership and control over an essential part of our lives: our own network services.  Too often each increment of technological advance has meant a corresponding (and often disproportionate) loss of control; Hcoop, the democratic and empowering sandbox, has been my bulwark against those forces for years.

Without adamc, this co-op will dry up and blow away.  He started it, he's spearheaded every effort to move it forward, and he's always been there to do the tedious tasks that no one else would.  To say both that he's stepping down as a volunteer and that this may be the end of the line for Hcoop is redundant.  Despite much of our aspirational talk over the years, Adam Chlipala is and always has been what holds this thing together.

I am a board member but have largely stayed out of the discussion about architecture.  I don't have the technical knowledge to have an opinion on the matter.  Moving forward, the same will be the case: I am not equipped to handle technical planning issues.

I am equipped to help move things forward, though, and I'm committed to doing something about it.  To that end, I will take it upon myself to straighten out our treasurer situation, educate myself about finances, and start prodding the board to act more often.  I hope others will join me.

I read the list and intended to vote for what the participating members seemed to prefer.  But squabbling about AFS was a constant distraction.  I agree with clinton that AFS has, in part, been unfairly scapegoated for other organizations problems, but the example of krunk going down must seal the issue for good: AFS-- for practical reasons, not technical ones-- is that AFS isn't going to work for us at this point in time as we have it now.  Megacz and Derrick are the only ones who know anything about it and are willing to help, and that's far too few for a stable setup.

So for now, in the new setup we at least have to remove mail hosting from AFS.  That aspect of our systems seems to have stopped the hopper upgrade in its tracks for months.  That is unacceptable.  Despite the complaints from the AFS folks that it was organizational problems and not technical limitations that were the problem, it's my understanding that this is a case of technical problems in either AFS or exim (or whatever other mail software we're using).  We should move away from that as soon as we can.

As for AFS, the benefits may outweigh the costs if we use it for home directories only.  Using it for databases is, as has been discussed on lists previously, probably redundant and definitely burdensome resource-wise.

As for other details, count my board vote for not maintaining any server hardware.  That means virtualization.  My instinct is for kernel virtualization instead of openvps-style virtualization.  And I think we need to make the move soon, like within the next month.

I like domtool quite a lot and I hope that everyone will join me in encouraging adamc to help continue developing and maintaining it.

So, to sum up (and to facilitate replies) I think the board should vote to:
- seek out a dedicated server where we can virtualize our new setup
- vote to move very soon
- scale back AFS to home directories only

We can do it!  We've come too far to let this fall apart.  I don't want to read a "What Happened to the Hosting Co-op" article on Megacz's website.  ;)