Maybe the problem is that I _have_ been in these guys shoes (anyone that has been awakened at 3am with your system completely off line and bleeding money raise

Maybe the problem is that I _have_ been in these guys shoes (anyone that has been awakened at 3am with your system completely off line and bleeding money raise your hands). The fact that it is a volunteer effort is pretty much irrelevant. One does not make worse decisions when one volunteers his/her time. Rather than nitpick your points against my "full of fail" comment I will say this: The people involved had several choices to make in all of this, before and after the hack. Pretty much the key choices were mistaken: Not having a good backup in place. Not giving a second's thought to how to restore. "Taking the opportunity" to perform a major version change (to an unfinished version, no less) while the system was completely down. And on and on and on. I really don't get why it matters if it is a volunteer effort or not. Volunteering does not mean "do low quality work", nor does it mean "not mission critical". Had this all been handled differently, it would have been a "why we were doen for a couple hours yesterday" blog post instead of "why were barely working, and will be for the next few weeks".