[HCoop-Discuss] VPS hosting for HCoop

[Adam Chlipala]

Michael Potter wrote:
> I'm a little suspicious that you're pushing this as an alternative way 
> to bring on paid staff by at least partially outsourcing them as the 
> staff of a VPS provider. 

I'm disappointed that you're accusing me of this.  Do you have any 
evidence that _anyone_ involved in this discussion is pushing a secret 
agenda?  Simple disagreement is no such evidence.  For someone who 
brings up cooperative principles so much, you seem pretty ready to 
ignore the basic standard of civility that makes consensus 
decision-making possible.

Also, I don't think you ever responded to any of the questions about why 
you think paying people to provide services to HCoop is a bad thing.

> On the other hand, another con you missed 
> was the problem of finding a VPS provider willing to let us use our own 
> kernel.
>   

Linode supports this, though I don't have any experience that allows me 
to decide if their support would be enough for our needs:
    http://blog.linode.com/2008/12/23/custom-kernels-with-pv-grub/

> There is also the philosophical angle to consider, whether a co-op 
> should move down one tier closer to retail and feed the for-profit 
> world. From running all VPSes, it's only one more step to mass 
> purchasing a web hosting package from a commercial provider with a group 
> discount, and so outsourcing tech support and software configuration. It 
> would be more in keeping with the cooperative approach to move UP a 
> level and provide its own rackspace. This is not exactly trivial though.
>   

That's certainly true.  I wrote it before, but it's worth repeating, for 
anyone interested in my personal position: I weight quality of service 
far ahead of our degree of support for particular kinds of businesses.  
In fact, I consider small businesses like Linode to be no worse off, 
philosophically, than co-ops, and I consider for-profit businesses to 
have significantly higher expected quality of service.  I think HCoop 
should exist because it isn't very profitable to provide the kinds of 
neat niche stuff that our members want.

The degree to which particular ideologies influence co-op 
decision-making will be decided by board votes.  From discussion on this 
list, I get the impression that only a minority of members have any 
particular preference for supporting other co-ops and other 
"less-businessy-than-usual" organizations, so I expect that we will end 
up favoring that position in decision-making.  It might be useful to 
take some kind of official poll, though.