AltAway Cloud
I see that Andy Barr is promoting a gofundme campaign to raise $2000 a month to cover the migration to "VZones Cloud." These are my thoughts and comments.
Since I went public in 2019, AltAway has been a free service, because I enjoy writing the code behind it and find your enjoyment of the service is all the reward I need. By encouraging user engagement and building a community, you the users run and manage most things, leaving me to concentrate on the things I enjoy, writing code and tinkering with hardware.
Over that time, the costs of running the service have changed. When the public Demo World was new, I used a Linode droplet to host it that cost $5/month. I now use a VM on an existing server in my home [which only cost me $100 in 2020, and is used for many other things] so it has an effective monthly cost of Zero. If I wanted to, the AltAway server software will run on a Raspberry Pi Zero for less than $20 with almost no ongoing running cost.
We do not need specialist developers and obscure technical expertise. I was taught COBOL in the 1990s, but I haven't used that since 2004! I've been writing code for fun since 1979, and will keep on doing so.
From what I understand, the plan is for VZ to rent an emulated SPARC machine running on Microsoft Azure, so the existing server codebase can be copied over to run on that instead of the increasingly vintage physical servers it currently uses. Whilst this is certainly one solution, it merely turns his potential problem of "old hardware that might cost a lot to fix if it breaks" to a guaranteed "expensive rental and usage payments every month" for no actual real benefit. He'll still be running the exact same world server software he is now with all the limitations and bugs that it always has had.
Many IT professionals whom have overseen migration of legacy computer systems over to the bigger Cloud Computing companies (i.e. Amazon and Microsoft) have detailed how their usage-based pricing has caused big headaches, and exorbitant charges. It's certainly never turned out to be a way to save money. All it needs is a runaway process to gobble up CPU time, or a disgruntled user to cause excessive network traffic, and the monthly bill can suddenly be many, many, times the amount you expected.
Furthermore he'll also need an official licence for Solaris from Oracle, which in turn comes with a pricy Support contract. It appears unlikely he already has a licence, as at the time of his acquisition of the servers, Sun/Oracle did not allow for the transfer of any existing licences and wouldn't sell new licences for old hardware. It's hard to find answers as to if they will do either now, but from the limited details I've been able to find, the prices are "substantial." Oracle has always been a company designed to extract every possible penny out of a customer..
To be clear, the Charon-SSP Virtual SPARC hardware offered by Microsoft Azure is designed specifically for companies that have no other way to keep legacy software running. Whilst this is certainly a possible way to keep his service running without relying on increasingly fragile legacy hardware, it is a very expensive way, and it seems Andy's answer to that is simply to try and milk the customers for even more money each month to cover it, with very little actual benefit to the customers themselves, beyond his promise of being more involved in-world.
Surely it would benefit his members more to find ways to reduce his existing costs, rather than commit to substantially more costs at their expense.
AltAway has always been created using free and open source, modern and up-to-date programming languages and technologies. It runs in a Docker container, which means it can be launched on pretty much any modern cloud computing platform, be it Azure, AWS, or any generic VPS; pretty much anything you can find online, even the $1/month systems found on LowEndBox.
Andy Barr wants the community to pay money so he can stop spending "significant time working outside of VZones" which he says he is doing to cover the costs of the migration, and instead he can concentrate on running events and activities, and providing support to the members. Having heard tales of how he responds to members with genuine grievances, I'm not sure how this is actually a benefit.
Here, we certainly don't need any any more resources, or money, to be able to run AltAway "on the cloud." We can do that already. The only reason I don't is that in the face of Andy's hostility using a server I personally control is much more reliable!
Here's a suggestion:
I will offer to host VZones worlds for him, using the already-cloud-capable AltAway server software, for a mere $666 (£500) per month. That's less than he's spending on electricity, according to his post, and a third of what he wants the members to spend *in addition to* their current monthly fees.
I don't expect him to accept this. Andy has always been incredibly hostile to AltAway, since the moment I went public. He blames me for every failing and fault with his own service, claiming hacking attempts, which I certainly have nothing to do with, if they even happened. He says my software is illegal, when it was written completely independently and is thus totally legal. He claims I'm infringing his copyright, but when asked, refuses to provide any proof that he owns any of the rights to the software or images we are using. (Buying the domain name and some backups, and finding some second hand servers, does not grant ANY rights of ownership to the software therein, nor does the licence to run it generally transfer without agreement from the issuers, i.e. Oracle/Sun and Fujitsu here.)
If I'd been in his position, trying to run a commercial service on decades-old hardware and unlicensed software, I'd have jumped at the chance to switch to something that is legal and would run on modern technologies and is under active development, and be cheaper to run than his current system. Instead, he hammered every service I used with vexatious and unsubstantiated copyright claims, reported my social media accounts, and defames and slanders me at every opportunity he can. He's deluded himself into believing the lies he spouts, and sadly, too many of his paying subscribers believe him too.
Work on what is now AltAway was started in 1998. The current iteration can be traced to 2016. The public launch of the Demo World in 2019 was effectively version 3. Since that day, we've survived and grown. We have a loyal community of users and builders, who contribute their time and skills for no reason other than they enjoy doing so.
AltAway will remain free to use. Forever.
Amanda.
