So it has been 10 years... more precisely, 10 years and six months since I started putting together the first foundations of what we now know as vpsFree.cz. For most of you, friends, members, supporters of open technologies, it is just ordinary hosting.
But for me, and the whole group of people actively building vpsFree.cz, it is, without much exaggeration, a life's mission.
I think that after 10 years, we can say we have more or less built what we set out to build. We wanted to find the most efficient way to secure a presence on the Internet without betraying our convictions. We wanted to show that essential services can be provided openly, with a balance between the value delivered and the money received.
Much of that has worked. We are operating, hosting not just experiments but many different businesses, developing open software that we hope will be useful to many people beyond our members, helping administrators become more capable, and playing a growing part in the Czech and Slovak community of administrators, programmers and hackers in general.
We have been less successful at communicating all the thinking behind it. Hackers understand what we do, but people from more "ordinary" backgrounds do not see it as clearly.
It turns out that after 10 years, the Internet is more data-centric than ever, and the trend is not stopping. Our life's mission goes beyond running a few thousand virtual servers. We want more, and not just those of us building vpsFree. I think I can say that all hackers want the same thing: to use these technologies and this knowledge for everyone's well-being, without distinction.
I do not think it is far from the truth to say that it is five minutes to midnight before these technologies turn against us. And it will be none other than the predatory side of ourselves that makes it happen.
I started vpsFree 10 years ago to demonstrate in practice what I mean by running a nonprofit sustainably. Now it is time to share my plans for where I see vpsFree, and much more besides, going next. As you may have sensed for a while, it will not stop at virtual servers.
Although we named the organization vpsFree, there are many more things we need to achieve and show how to do. The path to all of them has a common denominator, my favorite phrase these days: increasing our economic significance.
As I have written before, vpsFree is also about showing the old Freenet crowd how to do things. Yet we still officially use bylaws derived from theirs, although we operate differently. It would be useful to formalize this meritocratic system in bylaws that better reflect what vpsFree really is and, above all, everything it could still become.
We are a few steps away from joining NIX. We will start arranging our own fiber circuits between the locations housing our hardware, and connecting other networks to them. We would like to offer dedicated servers with the vpsAdmin/vpsAdminOS stack, as we already do for ourselves, with the aim of using higher income from businesses to make things better for everyone.
The plan is a nonprofit association with a trade license, without setting up a subsidiary limited liability company and adding another layer of opacity to the finances. Who said a nonprofit cannot pursue its goals partly through profitable activity? Legally, this is a sensitive subject, since the ground is largely unworked (or at least has been worked very badly). But with a new legal team helping us, there is nothing to fear. 22 Hlav is a team of great people with international experience in accounting and related issues for nonprofit organizations.
We will discuss much of this at the upcoming members' meeting, which we will try to stream. Stay with us, and if you have not already done so, become a member.