[ale] Lower cost hosting for ALE

[Jim Kinney]

All,

When I took on the hosting of ale web and email, I was hoping to see some growth in membership and thus a need for higher bandwidth to accommodate ALE. I raised my service level with Comcast to support more upload than my original lowest tier original service.

That upgrade added about $150/mo that I would like to now scale back as it's not being used. I plan to reduce the bandwidth at the first of January 2019.

Between now and March 1, 2019, I want ALE to either become substantially more active or relocate it's hosting. The server is a kvm virtual machine so it's readily transportable.

And, yes, the latest squabble on the list impacted the decision to throw in the towel. 20 years on this list and a small-scale flame war is the last straw for my participation in ale life support. I used to step in and privately contact people to request better online behavior and respect for others. If that failed, I would urge the combatants to be silent or be gone. If that failed, I unsubscribed them with notice. 

When I volunteered to run the hosting (over a decade ago!?!), ale had 1600+ subscribers. One individual joined and was such an abrasive person that 1200 people unsubscribed over 3-4 months. The normal unsubscribe rate was 5-10 people a year. In hindsight, I should have been more forceful earlier at squashing the abrasive personalities.

If ale is going to survive, it's going to need to develop some more formal structure with things like a code of conduct. If Linus can adapt and stop being abrasive, ale can too. The personal attacks should not be acceptable behavior. 

Maybe we need to spin off pale-ale, "Professional Association of Linux Experts - And Linux Enthusiasts" :-)

Or lager, "Linux And Gnu Expert Resources".

-- 
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. All tyopes are thumb related and reflect authenticity.
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