Postby emk » Mon Oct 29, 2018 10:43 am
I really appreciate that fact that everybody wants to help support the forum! But please don't send me money or gifts for now. I'm waiting for the mods to set up some kind of simple organization (it doesn't need to be a charity), and we can use that to accept money.
If it does get to be too burdensome, I can find ways to accept money in the meantime. I would just need to double-check with an accountant.
You'll note that this forum is ad-free. I have never liked the internet advertising industry much, but in recent years I'm getting seriously creeped out by the extensive tracking they do. It doesn't cost very much to run the forum.
One of my big goals was to set up the forum so that it basically runs itself. We use an Amazon RDS database with automatic backups, which if the database server ever dies, should automatically restore and rebuild itself without me touching it. (I've seen this happen for other RDS databases; it's fun to sit there and do nothing instead of panicking.) All the code runs in containers, so I can replace or upgrade the server in about 10 minutes. And now I've just moved the certs over to completely automated infrastructure, so they'll renew automatically. Basically, I want as few moving parts to break as possible! And literally everything is on a single bill.
Also, we have the ability to host multiple language-learning sites and tools for very little additional effort. And all the code is public. So once we have an organization, we can think about adding some other language stuff.
The other reason to set up an organization is because of the GDPR. I'm going to try to avoid discussing politics more than necessary here, but the GPDR—while well intentioned—is still a significant bureaucratic hassle for tiny organizations that aren't selling or sharing personal data. And the forthcoming EU copyright directive looks like a total disaster for small, shoestring operations. (I can't tell you all the reasons without a political rant.) So I definitely want to transfer the legal liability for the forum to a properly-consistuted organization as soon as possible.
If the paperwork still isn't ready in 2018, I do have a plan B that would allow me to accept funding and limit liability while waiting for the paperwork to be finished. So please don't worry about it for now!
5 x
