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There's a serious lack of useful information here. "Due to circumstances outside of the control of the Fosshost volunteers, we are now in a situation where we

There's a serious lack of useful information here. "Due to circumstances outside of the control of the Fosshost volunteers, we are now in a situation where we cannot guarantee our servers will stay online, and in fact expect them to go offline shortly." and in the link: "I'm expecting the BOS datacenter to go offline in the very near future." And in their Twitter profile, they seem to be a non-profit. I presume then that they're a formal organization of some sort, and should hopefully have some sort of budget and ability to handle contingencies. So... what's going on? What is the "BOS datacenter"? How is a datacenter suddenly going offline? Why does a non-profit dedicated to hosting critically depend on a particular datacenter and can't just move to hosting stuff somewhere else? Why are links from September that might be of help explaining already a 404? Also, who are these people, and whose projects are hosted there?

samip537 4y ago
We are unable to pay for co-location costs, and that's why our servers will go offline as Thomas our CEO is unreacheable. He only has access to bank and thus to funds. Explaination of the DC thing at Github: https://github.com/fosshostorg/fosshost.org/blob/main/src/posts/chicago-status-update.md https://github.com/fosshostorg/fosshost.org/blob/main/src/po... (Other posts can be read from there too.) Post from three months ago regarding state of affairs: https://github.com/fosshostorg/fosshost.org/blob/main/src/posts/suspended-applications.md https://github.com/fosshostorg/fosshost.org/blob/main/src/po... Skyler, one of the last Fosshost volunteers.
- tdeck 4y ago
  > Thomas our CEO is unreacheable. He only has access to bank and thus to funds. Does your nonprofit have a treasurer? I thought it was a legal requirement for the treasurer to be a different person from the CEO. In that case the treasurer should be able to present something on official letterhead and gain access to the account.
  - samip537 4y ago
    Not to my knowledge, or we tried but they weren't given access by our CEO so there's that.
    - tomrod 4y ago
      A bank can grant a treasurer access to resources if they are legally obligated to the funds. Has the CEO absconded? This is crazy.
      - tdeck 4y ago
        This really highlights why rules for nonprofit governance exist. The CEO could have also run off with donor's money and nobody else in the organization would know.
      - samip537 4y ago
        I don't know if the whole thing was ever officially documented, so we don't really have a way to gain control to the bank account. There's two directors remaining, and no board to speak of as they have resigned. All in all, we have tried our best to prevent this, but we cannot anymore. I don't know what's the motive for the CEO to be unresponsive and I don't want to speculate anything, but it's not at all fun for anyone.
        tomrod 4y ago
        Not to be too probing, but have you reached out to an attorney?
        samip537 4y ago
        Again I'm not a Director, so not my problem.
        vikramkr 4y ago
        It is going to be a problem for the radix project though, since given how close the ties are between that and fosshost there are significant questions about the motivation and competence of the team, and their dedication to protecting donor money/supporting the organizations they host etc. If this happens again, are they just going to abandon everything and walk away again? Why did those volunteers decide that the better way to further their mission was to abandon their old nonprofit as a loss and start a new one instead of taking serious steps to regain control and at the least clearly document all leg routes taken/the reason that they had to give up in the end? It's the same community of people that are being asked to trust substantially the same set of people a second time.
- dale_glass 4y ago
  Sorry to hear that! What happened to the CEO? Has this been going on for long?
  - samip537 4y ago
    He has been unresponsive for the past 6 months, I have even tried calling and they decided to not answer so... This has been going on internally for really long from when people started to resign in 2021/2022 due to management issues.
    - choult 4y ago
      He appears to be Head of Operations at a company called Ciptex, operating out of Manchester UK. His most recent LinkedIn activity is from 2 months ago. Perhaps try via their contact info?
      - samip537 4y ago
        Will not help, as they (our CEO) don't seem to want to answer to anything related to Fosshost. Also I cannot be bothered anymore.
        choult 4y ago
        Looks like you're a UK CIC, which means you're regulated like a company, and your CEO/Director has statutory responsibilities. If he is failing to dispense his duties, he could be struck off as a company director in future. He incorporated a Limited company called Fosshosts Projects Ltd. last year, on his own. It'll be struck off in the next two months due to failure to file. He also has another company currently in protracted liquidation, and it sounds like he is failing in his responsibilities there too. The guy either sounds shady, or in a deep mess.
        toomuchtodo 4y ago
        Can anyone file a complaint for authorities to investigate? It sounds like embezzlement of organizational funds might be a possibility and it warrants whomever oversees non profits in the jurisdiction asking some questions.
- remram 4y ago
  You might not want to, but you should put some of that information on your website. Otherwise this is a huge red flag against the "Radix project" you are advertising there. If not for the information in this thread, I would stay the hell away from a project "founded in part by one of the original architects" from the ashes of the one which died suddenly without any explicit reason. You don't have to put your dirty laundry there, but you should at least mention that the Fosshost leadership moved on, and that it's the other members that are starting Radix.
  - amatecha 4y ago
    Yeah it's good to know when the people who actually built and ran stuff are moving on, and the problems are due to poor management (especially by people with zero connection to the new thing).
- n3storm 4y ago
  horizontal organization 101: more than one member (if not all) should have access to the bank, mobile,water,light,gas contracts
  - wartijn_ 4y ago
    I think they've realized that by now...
  - pardon_me 4y ago
    Horizontal organisation 001: one member should not hold the ownership and voting rights? The AWOL director has full control... "Nature of control Ownership of voting rights - 75% or more Right to appoint and remove directors" Ownership in open orgs is very difficult but this is set up to fail.
- fsckboy 4y ago
  in situations like this, if you could use financial help you need to blurt out what the costs are that need to be covered. There's plenty of people with money about, so if you have somebody's attention take advantage of it. I've already clicked a half a dozen link and there's no info. Why make me work so hard? if you are happy it's over, well, that's ok, thanks for volunteering as long as you guys have.
  - ajsnigrutin 4y ago
    Also probably a bunch of organizations that might be willing to host for free.. if they knew that it was an issue.
  - RF_Savage 4y ago
    Money will not help when the CEO with the ability to pay the bills has been AWOL for 6 months.
    - colonwqbang 4y ago
      The board could elect a new CEO?
      - samip537 4y ago
        What board? They have resigned. It's just two directors remaining, one of which is the unresponsive CEO.
trynewideas 4y ago
The projects list as of February in their GitHub repo, which includes GNOME and Debian: https://github.com/fosshostorg/fosshost.org/blob/main/src/data/project-list.json https://github.com/fosshostorg/fosshost.org/blob/main/src/da...
- pengaru 4y ago
  Considering gnome.org's IP is owned by RedHat, I find that quite unlikely to be accurate.
  - CameronNemo 4y ago
    Fosshost provides (provided) resources to those projects, but does not have any IP ownership. Redhat does not own (100%) of GNOME IP, there are many contributors. Also redhat is just a brand asset of IBM, so it cannot actually own anything.
    - lategloriousgnu 4y ago
      Parent means IP as in Internet Protocol, not Intellectual property. The DNS for gnome.org resolves to 8.43.85.5, which lists Red Hat Inc. as the ISP. Indicating it's unlikely to be hosted by Fosshost.
      - CameronNemo 4y ago
        Oh I see what you mean. Fosshost is unique in that they have a lot of arm64 metal floating around (maybe locked up in a DC soon?). They typically have offered it up for CI or distro build servers.
    - pengaru 4y ago
      I said gnome.org's IP, not GNOME's. As the sibling comment stated; I am lazily referring to the site's IP address.
      - CameronNemo 4y ago
wrycoder 4y ago
There's your problem: "Fosshost Enters Into Long-Term Partnership With Freenode" Last week this not-for-profit hosting provider announced they would be moving their IRC presence to Libera.Chat from Freenode. But the plot twist now is a new announcement made on Tuesday that they have entered into a long-term partnership with Freenode Limited and Andrew Lee. They will be assisting Freenode and are said to be working on long-term plans around Freenode on the Fosshost network. Additionally, "In the near term, the two projects will partner to launch co/cross branded public and tenant-facing SaaS offerings, available BYOD or levering the combined network for DNS."[0] [0] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Fosshost-Freenode https://www.phoronix.com/news/Fosshost-Freenode
- mst 4y ago
  They pulled out of that pretty rapidly when they realised just what a disaster Andrew Lee was going to be. Took them a few days to realise their mistake though, so they still got to eat a bunch of reputational fallout anyway. (source: told them it was a terrible idea beforehand, got contacted back extremely sheepishly when they realised I'd been right)
  - andrewnyr 4y ago
    Mostly all of the volunteers did not support going into partnership with freenode. Thomas was one of the only ones who wanted it (and he only did it when mostly all of the tech team threatned to quit) (source: I am a former volunteer at fosshost)
    - nszceta 4y ago
      Who gave money to the directors running Fosshost?
    - mst 4y ago
      No implication that there wasn't also pushback internally was intended, my apologies for the fact that now I look at it again, my comment can clearly be read that way. I kept to a generic 'they' because the communications in question were private so while I'm comfortable revealing they existed I felt keeping the description deliberately vague was only fair.

samip537 4y ago

We are unable to pay for co-location costs, and that's why our servers will go offline as Thomas our CEO is unreacheable. He only has access to bank and thus to funds. Explaination of the DC thing at Github: https://github.com/fosshostorg/fosshost.org/blob/main/src/posts/chicago-status-update.md https://github.com/fosshostorg/fosshost.org/blob/main/src/po... (Other posts can be read from there too.) Post from three months ago regarding state of affairs: https://github.com/fosshostorg/fosshost.org/blob/main/src/posts/suspended-applications.md https://github.com/fosshostorg/fosshost.org/blob/main/src/po... Skyler, one of the last Fosshost volunteers.

tdeck 4y ago
> Thomas our CEO is unreacheable. He only has access to bank and thus to funds. Does your nonprofit have a treasurer? I thought it was a legal requirement for the treasurer to be a different person from the CEO. In that case the treasurer should be able to present something on official letterhead and gain access to the account.
- samip537 4y ago
  Not to my knowledge, or we tried but they weren't given access by our CEO so there's that.
  - tomrod 4y ago
    A bank can grant a treasurer access to resources if they are legally obligated to the funds. Has the CEO absconded? This is crazy.
    - tdeck 4y ago
      This really highlights why rules for nonprofit governance exist. The CEO could have also run off with donor's money and nobody else in the organization would know.
    - samip537 4y ago
      I don't know if the whole thing was ever officially documented, so we don't really have a way to gain control to the bank account. There's two directors remaining, and no board to speak of as they have resigned. All in all, we have tried our best to prevent this, but we cannot anymore. I don't know what's the motive for the CEO to be unresponsive and I don't want to speculate anything, but it's not at all fun for anyone.
      - tomrod 4y ago
        Not to be too probing, but have you reached out to an attorney?
        samip537 4y ago
        Again I'm not a Director, so not my problem.
        vikramkr 4y ago
        It is going to be a problem for the radix project though, since given how close the ties are between that and fosshost there are significant questions about the motivation and competence of the team, and their dedication to protecting donor money/supporting the organizations they host etc. If this happens again, are they just going to abandon everything and walk away again? Why did those volunteers decide that the better way to further their mission was to abandon their old nonprofit as a loss and start a new one instead of taking serious steps to regain control and at the least clearly document all leg routes taken/the reason that they had to give up in the end? It's the same community of people that are being asked to trust substantially the same set of people a second time.
dale_glass 4y ago
Sorry to hear that! What happened to the CEO? Has this been going on for long?
- samip537 4y ago
  He has been unresponsive for the past 6 months, I have even tried calling and they decided to not answer so... This has been going on internally for really long from when people started to resign in 2021/2022 due to management issues.
  - choult 4y ago
    He appears to be Head of Operations at a company called Ciptex, operating out of Manchester UK. His most recent LinkedIn activity is from 2 months ago. Perhaps try via their contact info?
    - samip537 4y ago
      Will not help, as they (our CEO) don't seem to want to answer to anything related to Fosshost. Also I cannot be bothered anymore.
      - choult 4y ago
        Looks like you're a UK CIC, which means you're regulated like a company, and your CEO/Director has statutory responsibilities. If he is failing to dispense his duties, he could be struck off as a company director in future. He incorporated a Limited company called Fosshosts Projects Ltd. last year, on his own. It'll be struck off in the next two months due to failure to file. He also has another company currently in protracted liquidation, and it sounds like he is failing in his responsibilities there too. The guy either sounds shady, or in a deep mess.
        toomuchtodo 4y ago
        Can anyone file a complaint for authorities to investigate? It sounds like embezzlement of organizational funds might be a possibility and it warrants whomever oversees non profits in the jurisdiction asking some questions.
remram 4y ago
You might not want to, but you should put some of that information on your website. Otherwise this is a huge red flag against the "Radix project" you are advertising there. If not for the information in this thread, I would stay the hell away from a project "founded in part by one of the original architects" from the ashes of the one which died suddenly without any explicit reason. You don't have to put your dirty laundry there, but you should at least mention that the Fosshost leadership moved on, and that it's the other members that are starting Radix.
- amatecha 4y ago
  Yeah it's good to know when the people who actually built and ran stuff are moving on, and the problems are due to poor management (especially by people with zero connection to the new thing).
n3storm 4y ago
horizontal organization 101: more than one member (if not all) should have access to the bank, mobile,water,light,gas contracts
- wartijn_ 4y ago
  I think they've realized that by now...
- pardon_me 4y ago
  Horizontal organisation 001: one member should not hold the ownership and voting rights? The AWOL director has full control... "Nature of control Ownership of voting rights - 75% or more Right to appoint and remove directors" Ownership in open orgs is very difficult but this is set up to fail.
fsckboy 4y ago
in situations like this, if you could use financial help you need to blurt out what the costs are that need to be covered. There's plenty of people with money about, so if you have somebody's attention take advantage of it. I've already clicked a half a dozen link and there's no info. Why make me work so hard? if you are happy it's over, well, that's ok, thanks for volunteering as long as you guys have.
- ajsnigrutin 4y ago
  Also probably a bunch of organizations that might be willing to host for free.. if they knew that it was an issue.
- RF_Savage 4y ago
  Money will not help when the CEO with the ability to pay the bills has been AWOL for 6 months.
  - colonwqbang 4y ago
    The board could elect a new CEO?
    - samip537 4y ago
      What board? They have resigned. It's just two directors remaining, one of which is the unresponsive CEO.

trynewideas 4y ago

The projects list as of February in their GitHub repo, which includes GNOME and Debian: https://github.com/fosshostorg/fosshost.org/blob/main/src/data/project-list.json https://github.com/fosshostorg/fosshost.org/blob/main/src/da...

pengaru 4y ago
Considering gnome.org's IP is owned by RedHat, I find that quite unlikely to be accurate.
- CameronNemo 4y ago
  Fosshost provides (provided) resources to those projects, but does not have any IP ownership. Redhat does not own (100%) of GNOME IP, there are many contributors. Also redhat is just a brand asset of IBM, so it cannot actually own anything.
  - lategloriousgnu 4y ago
    Parent means IP as in Internet Protocol, not Intellectual property. The DNS for gnome.org resolves to 8.43.85.5, which lists Red Hat Inc. as the ISP. Indicating it's unlikely to be hosted by Fosshost.
    - CameronNemo 4y ago
      Oh I see what you mean. Fosshost is unique in that they have a lot of arm64 metal floating around (maybe locked up in a DC soon?). They typically have offered it up for CI or distro build servers.
  - pengaru 4y ago
    I said gnome.org's IP, not GNOME's. As the sibling comment stated; I am lazily referring to the site's IP address.
    - CameronNemo 4y ago

wrycoder 4y ago

There's your problem: "Fosshost Enters Into Long-Term Partnership With Freenode" Last week this not-for-profit hosting provider announced they would be moving their IRC presence to Libera.Chat from Freenode. But the plot twist now is a new announcement made on Tuesday that they have entered into a long-term partnership with Freenode Limited and Andrew Lee. They will be assisting Freenode and are said to be working on long-term plans around Freenode on the Fosshost network. Additionally, "In the near term, the two projects will partner to launch co/cross branded public and tenant-facing SaaS offerings, available BYOD or levering the combined network for DNS."[0] [0] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Fosshost-Freenode https://www.phoronix.com/news/Fosshost-Freenode

mst 4y ago
They pulled out of that pretty rapidly when they realised just what a disaster Andrew Lee was going to be. Took them a few days to realise their mistake though, so they still got to eat a bunch of reputational fallout anyway. (source: told them it was a terrible idea beforehand, got contacted back extremely sheepishly when they realised I'd been right)
- andrewnyr 4y ago
  Mostly all of the volunteers did not support going into partnership with freenode. Thomas was one of the only ones who wanted it (and he only did it when mostly all of the tech team threatned to quit) (source: I am a former volunteer at fosshost)
  - nszceta 4y ago
    Who gave money to the directors running Fosshost?
  - mst 4y ago
    No implication that there wasn't also pushback internally was intended, my apologies for the fact that now I look at it again, my comment can clearly be read that way. I kept to a generic 'they' because the communications in question were private so while I'm comfortable revealing they existed I felt keeping the description deliberately vague was only fair.