@carlton Timing is so important....I feel like I was two years too early when I was trying to find (or create) a co-op providing Internet infrastructure services. I got as far as participating in a job council within the @hachyinfra community. I still think it's a good idea and current events make the concept compelling to a broader audience.
@carlton@maxine you’re just trading a dependency on GitHub for dependency on Cloudflare, and almost certainly worse uptime. It feels like we can barely keep RTD online these days with full-time staff.
@carlton@maxine until the bots and the attacks come, and reliability issues happen even more frequently with less operational support. Sadly, the Internet has gotten to be an incredibly hostile place the last few years.
I used to joke that the Internet could not be invented today because it required a lot of work with no obvious benefit. It's not funny anymore. @carlton@webology@ericholscher@maxine If "infrastructure" is "stuff required by the stuff I require" and "production" is "when people use it and I'm not around" then few devs and IT staff will be able self host everything above their IP address. For instance, when I mention that I hosted a private instance of RTD + Texlive at work, few people know what that means. (... even fewer give a $#@).
Federation requires interoperability and that's a word I don't hear often enough. Interoperability requires a big view and a bigger heart...John Postel sized heart. IMHO, if we had a half dozen more @brewsterkahle level people, I would have reason to be optimistic.
So we need to find those people or build them if necessary. (If this makes any sense then the cough medicine is wearing off.)
I have run my own Forgejo for a few years, and I know what it costs me a month to keep https://djangopackages.org up, and it's not free or even particularly easy. I mostly know what I'm doing, so it's fine. 😬
The average dev, won't know, and as Eric pointed out, it's a hostile world out there. ☕
None of that means we shouldn't have these conversations, and maybe something will sprout from them.