As a longtime provider of services in one form or another since the late 80's and early 90's, I felt the pain of having to write out the following blog post/update.

Drew is an opinionated perfectionist with an attention to detail and his perspective that chafes some, endears others, and deservedly, receives the respect earned when someone strives toward par excellence for those for whom they provide services for.

I have some differing set of conclusions from my understanding of what he laments as the ordeal he's been through in the past year, like, "why would anyone consider a carrier besides DHL for international overseas shipments?" Also, I fail to see the logic in moving his entire infra from the U.S. (where there are many affordable top-tier carrier hotels - aka datacenters) to Amsterdam, which also has fine facilities and maybe it is because of privacy concerns which depending on what those are, may indeed be quite valid from my perspective.

But not having IPv6 fully deployed (as a result of datacenter choice?) is puzzling, although almost inconsequential operationally, in production, ... Almost.

Considering I've always looked directly at the carriers themselves, used my own delegated IP infrastructure for core operations, I tend to look at a datacenter as three things:

- Electricity
- Fail-over electricity (Generators)
- Air conditioning

Most folks rent a rack that comes with transit, I ask how much the XC is - I can find, mix, and pick my transit providers. I just wanna know that my shit is secure in a suite or cage behind locked cabinets that I personally have 24/7 access to at anytime (even though I'll rarely do so) and have 24/7 remote hands to swap drives, hot-pluggable power supplies and plug cables into the designated ports I specify, etc. Those things typically come w/zero cost.

For DDoS'ing, I do like to outsource this as part of a package, and I'm open to any offers of included transit/XC and want to know how much each additional 20A of electricity cost me each month in addition to the rack fees. Putting the onerous of protecting my customers from a good DDoS'ing on someone else like my upstream takes a lot of worry away.

Shipping machinery though, that's a bit distinct too, I've been burned a few times domestically, although always recovered my *tangible costs - time? well, I've lost a couple of customers because their infra was lost or damaged in transit, but insurance is important - Drew had that. What I'm really wondering though, is who besides DHL would you even trust to ship servers over the Atlantic Ocean?

That's a cost I would not consider skimping on - A girl I almost married worked for DHL for over 20 years and they'll cut a check at the drop of a hat, which might have worked out well for Drew considering these were old boxes ready for retirement anyway and the replacement cost (new stuffs) is what you insure for.

Anyway, I've really admired much of what Drew has done over the years, was cheerleading for him as he migrated from full time paycheck person to finally being able to announce that he "thinks" he can make enough money for a living by devoting himself full time to FOSS with his fledgling SourceHut.

Yah, sometimes his head swelled up pretty big, making it hard to fit through doorways, and I've butted heads with him here and there on technical matters only, but have always respected him, and in truth, he was never not correct even if his way was the wrong way, or there was simply a better way - usually those were matters of opinion coz there's more than six ways to Sunday to skin a cat.

Anyway, he's been kicked in the balls really hard, which if you know much of him, must have been really hard to lay all of that out in some manner of detail (He's almost always brutally transparent). For that, and moreover for getting right back up after being knocked down (maybe by da man?), I applaud his candidness. His devotion to those of you reading this that may have free repos at SourceHut, and I'm also encouraging everyone to kick in at least a few bucks - fuck that dumb app that you don't need, let alone pay $2.95 for the exclusive right to be tracked - I urge you with all FOSSiness in mind... Give it a read, and send him whatev, ... I guarantee it will come back to you tenfold.

Drew is a consummate FOSS warrior, do it for yourself, please - Five bucks, fifty bucks, heck, whatever isn't going to cut into your budget for porterhouse steak this weekend would be nice.

And it will make you feel good too.

Full disclosure: I'm not getting shit from this article. Drew and I only converse occasionally and usually it is to disagree - some folks are just good coz of what's in their heart, their commitment to the community, and whether you're a fan or not doing this for him really is doing this for yourself and everyone else in the FOSS world.

Here's the link to the article/update.

#tallship #FOSS #OpenSource #SourceHut #Git #repo

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