This is Servers.coop – we're making a recipe to set up a community server provider, and cooking up our own dog-food by offering Virtual Private Server space.
We'll be starting out on donated hardware, powered by renewable energy, in Ashton-under-Lyme in the UK.
We'll be launching a crowdfunding campaign shortly to make sure costs are covered for the first year – follow us on here, join our Matrix space https://matrix.to/#/!bDeUsKuqTQwBjBEAuj:autonomic.zone?via=autonomic.zone&via=matrix.org&via=gottsnack.net , or look out for details of our upcoming e-mail list.
#ServersCoop #Hosting #Servers
(PS thanks to Sunbeam.city for hosting us on here)
@serverscoop so basically making it easy to set up a vps provider?
@serverscoop hell yeah
@powersource currently if a collective wants to offer VPSs to others, they have to either use proprietary software, or do shittons of manual work, or both.
Our theory is that if the path from "we found a server in a bin" / "we pooled our money and bought a secondhand server off the internet" to "people paying for VPSs" were shorter, then there would be a lot more ethical hosting options.
– 3wc
@serverscoop @powersource Hmm I guess you mean Ashton-under-Ly*n*e ? (Might be the 1st good thing to come out of Ashton in many years !) Hmm which bit do you think is missing for people to set up their own VPSs? The actual virtualisation is easy enough - so is it the management tying it to customers or what that you're aiming for?
@penguin42 nope, part of the project is to build a brand new, confusingly-similarly-named Ashton (it was a typo)
@penguin42 in terms of "what's missing", I wrote some stuff here: https://community.coops.tech/t/experimenting-our-way-towards-shared-infrastructure-survey-results/2965/6
From a hoster's perspective the main thing that seems to be missing is automation. E.g. OpenNebula is amazing but as far as I know at this point you still have to roll your own billing.
– 3wc
@serverscoop AH yeh, OK I can see the accounting integration and stuff needs doing; I wonder if you can integrate it with some existing open accounting/payment system. (I was thinking Odoo but I'm not sure if the Open version of that has everything needed)
@penguin42 I'm really interested to try Odoo, I haven't yet, I have heard that the open version is quite limited.
It looks like we'll be able to use Capsul for Servers.coop for the moment – we're putting in support for non-USD currencies, and might end up needing to add subscription (instead of prepaid credit) billing soon... but it's hard to resist something that goes all the way from "payment with Stripe" to "running VM", especially when it already uses a virt stack that a few of us are already familiar with.
–3wc