Jim's Statement Regarding The FR Servers
Jim's Original Post:
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Thank you all very much, but there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the system other than the fact that it runs on computers and that we run on a shoestring budget with no employees. It’s just me and John, Amy and Chris. I’ve been involved with computers since 1972 starting with the Univac and the IBM/360 and Digital’s PDP and VAX generations. Amy got started a few years earlier. John started programming when he was 14 and was a commercial programmer by 16. He was our C+ guru when we were in the software business. He introduced us to the Internet in the early 90’s before the browser had even been developed. I’ve been a programmer/analyst from the 70’s and also in programming/project management and data processing management and also owned my own software company.
The one biggest thing we’ve learned in all these years is that computer systems have a tendency to crash. And when the inevitable happens, we don’t panic. We troubleshoot, find the problems, fix them and go on. Been doing it for nearly forty years. There is nothing wrong with FR. It’s perfectly normal for systems to fail occasionally.
Now there are ways to make a system more bullet proof and to build-in back ups and redundancy, etc, so there is almost zero downtime for users, but these are usually reserved for critical operations. And that’s because they cost money. Lots of it.
For example we only have one tech, one programmer, one hardware guy, one security guy, one operating system guru, one perl guru, one mysql guru, one all around computer guy and John is it. He’s also our chief procurement officer and liaison with all vendors and suppliers and in his spare time he fills in as our research and development department. Dear old dad with 40 years experience in programming and managing legacy computer systems tries to join in and help but usually just gets in the way. John is a one man shop, he’s on call, on duty 24/7/365 with no vacations or holidays unless he carries a cell phone and lap top and he likes it that way.
We could hire three or four guys to do what John does and we still couldn’t cover it 24/7/365 and provide uninterruptible service. We’d still suffer downtime.
We could also build redundant systems. But that just doubles the cost, doubles the maintenance and doubles or triples the capital requirements and ongoing expense. And unless they were located in different parts of the country on different providers, the redundant systems would not guarantee 100% uptime. Guess what? Even multi-million dollar fail-safe systems fail occasionally. Computers crash! It’s a fact of life and we deal with it every day.
FR was started on zero capital. It was a hobby that has grown terribly out of control. It was a one man shop when I set it up. Amy came in later to help me administer it, then John took over the programming a couple years later and redesigned and rewrote it all at least three times since. He built the servers it runs on. Now it may be that if we had the money we could order all new equipment and redesign and rewrite the software again with an eye for making it all bullet proof, but that would require lots of money and probably hiring some additional talent and it would require time. But we have no money and no access to money. And we are reluctant to take on any additional debt.
Now we could go commercial. We could sell ads. We could sell subscriptions or memberships, We could sell t-shirts and hats. But the moment we do, we invite scrutiny and copyright lawsuits. Before going commercial we would have to scrub our archives of any possible copyright violations. And we’d have to tighten up our current operations to make sure no one posts anything that could get us into trouble with any publisher of stories, photos, images, etc. And with sharks like Righthaven swimming around, there will always be room for trouble. And going commercial still wouldn’t guarantee enough income to build and maintain a paid staff, bullet proof software, redundant systems, etc.
I’m an old dog and I like to keep it simple. We have a nice little system here. We are comfortable with the hardware and our software and our providers and it works fairly well. Actually, very well. We have some occasional problems and have been down a few times but as I said, there are no guarantees that if we had double or triple the size of our hardware or our staff that we still would not suffer some downtime occasionally. It happens.
And we’re perfectly comfortable with donor funding at a shoestring level. I’d hate to complicate the thing by going commercial. We are grassroots and it makes sense to me to keep it all grassroots and uncomplicated if we possibly can.
I see no reason whatsoever to panic about our systems our staffing or our funding.
And I really wish to thank all of YOU who make it possible. Your donations provide the capital we need to keep it all going and your continued participation on our forums makes FR the premier God and Country CONSERVATIVE site on the Internet!!
Thank God for the FReepers!! God bless you all.
588 posted on 01/11/2011 9:37:01 AM PST by Jim Robinson (Rebellion is brewing!! Nuke the corrupt commie bastards to HELL!!)
But this site has grown to be too important.
I have donated many times and I have VOLUNTEERED to help with the systems (25 years experience as a computer engineer)
I just think he could get rich doing this and we like capitalism here.
And this site in its current state fails the “bus test” (if the owner gets hit by a bus- it's probably doomed- this is a common computer industry concept- meaning all critical knowlege and responsibility should not be in only one person)