I'm coming to the conclusion that community-owned and operated small clouds (co-ops) with easy onramps for self-hosting open source services like mail, storage, and VPN are the only way forward.
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@mttaggart I recently came to the same conclusion. I love self-hosting but it's not for everyone.
A friend and I put together this site to gauge interest. Would love any feedback you have.
@mttaggart This whole thread is amazing, btw.
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I'm coming to the conclusion that community-owned and operated small clouds (co-ops) with easy onramps for self-hosting open source services like mail, storage, and VPN are the only way forward. Every corpo service is eventually going to make you ashamed to use it.
@mttaggart I hate to admit it but this is how I've been the whole time. I had a friend whose father was one of the biggest cattle ranchers. Hundreds of thousands of numbered heads, as far as the eye could see in massive dirt lots with industrial feed and killing machines. But when they wanted to eat beef, they went to their little grassy backyard and brought the slowly raised, hand-fed cow with a name like "Bessie" over to their good friend the butcher. "We will eat Bessie, never from the lots".
True story.
And as much as I worked for the biggest operations (and still do, consulting) I always ran my own servers. Web log has been my own Linux machine since 1995, always self-hosted. Mail server too. But I understand why some people can't imagine getting their hands involved, thinking deep like how to care for and yet say goodbye to Bessie instead of just ripping open a package of prepared meals.
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@mttaggart This whole thread is amazing, btw.
@stanley Thanks for this! I'll give it a read ASAP.
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I'm coming to the conclusion that community-owned and operated small clouds (co-ops) with easy onramps for self-hosting open source services like mail, storage, and VPN are the only way forward. Every corpo service is eventually going to make you ashamed to use it.
@mttaggart and if they don't, they'll enshitify until you can't stand them anymore. I've come to that conclusion and yours over the last couple years.
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> "support network and a set of tools to help individuals and community organisations self host"
we have yet to articulate this with @coopcloud but i do believe we are going in this direction
the solidarity network is crucial to emphasise which goes beyond hollow top-down claims of "reuse" and "community"
unity upon strategic tool use has major benefits which stands in stark contract to the dominant reinvent the wheel tech hype cycles...
@d1 @philcowans @mttaggart @vfrmedia @coopcloud that's good to hear, and we definitely hope it goes well
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@mttaggart I am also one of those running servers for friends (mail, web, Nextcloud, Jitsi Meet, SearXNG etc) and I think about moving this to a private community, so I am not the only one taking care of the infrastructure.
@askaaron @mttaggart This is the way. Find several people already running small personal clouds and club them together so they each can be responsible for a smaller number of services. If you do that, maybe you get reliable machines and enough capacity that you can serve more people.
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@mttaggart A throwback to the 1990's/early 00's when you'd share a box running FreeBSD or Solaris colo-ed where we knew somebody and kick in what amounted to beer money.
@rlonstein @mttaggart Yep. Old-school hosting.
Kinda like tildes these days, when you think about it.
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@jumpingjackrussell Don't try to solve every problem at once.
@mttaggart @jumpingjackrussell Agreed. That's a "this porblem is way too big to solve" idea killer.
Think BBS. Then think BBS net.
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@mttaggart I think it would have to follow the pirate radio model: anchor a ship in international waters, tap into subsea cables, 'adopt' some IP addresses, provide a top-level DNS server, ...
@khleedril @mttaggart Data havens.
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@mttaggart I think email especially, without that level of resiliency, is basically malpractice
@delta_vee @mttaggart That's an idea killer. You have to start small.
Think back to how everything started off in the 1980's.
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@mttaggart @jumpingjackrussell Agreed. That's a "this porblem is way too big to solve" idea killer.
Think BBS. Then think BBS net.
Sounds like life these days… requires apocoloptimism.
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@delta_vee @mttaggart That's an idea killer. You have to start small.
Think back to how everything started off in the 1980's.
@drwho @mttaggart We don't live there anymore, and I haven't run email or DNS (or hell even web services) without some form of HA since 2007
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@drwho @mttaggart We don't live there anymore, and I haven't run email or DNS (or hell even web services) without some form of HA since 2007
@delta_vee @mttaggart That's great. Good on you.
For folks kicking around a possible project to start, that implicitly tells them "Don't bother." That is unhelpful.
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@delta_vee @mttaggart That's great. Good on you.
For folks kicking around a possible project to start, that implicitly tells them "Don't bother." That is unhelpful.
@drwho @mttaggart Mail, storage, and VPN (and DNS) aren't small projects you can just run on a whim, not for other people. There are tons of cheap VPS services out there. There are even some who *aren't* running a vuln-ridden copy of cPanel from 2018. That's not really what we're talking about here, I don't think
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@mttaggart @brahms Craigslist and Facebook marketplace too, depending on where you live (I’m within 2 hours of a major metro that always has somebody selling off-lease micro desktops at rock bottom prices)
@ajn142 @mttaggart @brahms
There's an irony to these replies... -
I'm coming to the conclusion that community-owned and operated small clouds (co-ops) with easy onramps for self-hosting open source services like mail, storage, and VPN are the only way forward. Every corpo service is eventually going to make you ashamed to use it.
@mttaggart I'd love to see some sort of cooperative agreement between groups in disparate places, so that information could be mirrored across geography like a real private "cloud".
Does something like that exist?
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@mttaggart I recently came to the same conclusion. I love self-hosting but it's not for everyone.
A friend and I put together this site to gauge interest. Would love any feedback you have.
@stanley @mttaggart This is a great article to read right now. I somehow believe there are a million people right now thinking about self-hosting cuz Reasons.
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Not for nothing but I've written a very well-regarded guide on home labs if you want to get started.
@mttaggart Is the PDF version indexed?
Edit: I also just noticed under prerequisites where it says "The Linux command line (start here)" the link doesn't seem to work properly
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I'm coming to the conclusion that community-owned and operated small clouds (co-ops) with easy onramps for self-hosting open source services like mail, storage, and VPN are the only way forward. Every corpo service is eventually going to make you ashamed to use it.
@mttaggart there are so many businesses that make more sense as a coop (or even a network of coops) than as a Silicon Valley style startup. The one I want to try and get going someday is grocery delivery from locally owned stores, owned by a coop of the stores, the delivery drivers, and the team building the ordering infrastructure.
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I'm coming to the conclusion that community-owned and operated small clouds (co-ops) with easy onramps for self-hosting open source services like mail, storage, and VPN are the only way forward. Every corpo service is eventually going to make you ashamed to use it.
@mttaggart Co-ops are such an underrated and underused form of organization.
My energy co-op (well, you know, 0.001% "mine") has consistently been excellent in service and pricing.
I've wanted to start one for hosting, but I never thought it would be popular enough to be feasible. Maybe I was wrong.
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