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from the i-am-so-fucking-sick-of-this-drama dept.
Update: 10 March 2014 20:20 UTC. Follow here for the latest.
Update: 10 March 2014 19:10 UTC.
At this point Barrabas reports he is exchanging email with the buyer but refuses to say anything. Until we hear from them, we have to hope for the best but plan for the worst. If this link goes down, please go to the linode site where we will regroup. We will use that link as a fallback if necessary.
Update: 10 March 2014 18:30 UTC.
Barrabas reports in IRC he has received funds for the site and has sold the domain name. The terms of this sale, as well as its buyer, have not been disclosed. We await additional information. If you have information on this, please contact us at admin @ soylentnews . org
Update: 10 March 2014 16:30 UTC.
Due to NCommander's personal involvement with the situation he is recusing himself from negotiations. I (Mattie_p) am currently working with the staff to figure out how to address this incident. We have posted a poll which is available and should show up shortly on the front page.
Original text:
We've been held hostage by John:
Working with NCommander
Am I The Bad Guy
Right now, I can't write a coherent response properly (I'm writing this from a Mac Store right now as some sort of response was necessary). Despite John's offer, we never used the Linode's he purchased for hosting slash, and the two services (forums and wiki) that were hosted on them were migrated. I had hoped that this would have been a private issue between me and John, to be handed by email with a proper agreement, but the site itself is now at risk.
Right now, I'm organizing a response with out staff now, but I won't be home for several hours so MrBluze is currently handling the crisis. He can hand off to mattie_p when he returns, or myself when I have proper net access again. John's offer does not reflect myself or any of the staff here, nor does he have what he says he has. The web server, dev server (fusion forge), and database were always hosted on Linode's on my personal account. John DID have access to the Linode account which was revoked when he left staff, but to my knowledge never had the root password or shell accounts on any of the boxes. That access was revoked. It is possible he has a copy of the database, I do not know for sure. He does not at this moment have access to any of the hardware powering the site. He does however control the DNS register and can possibly yank the site from under us. If that happens, I can send a mass email to every user account to inform them of what happened, and where we are now. We supposedly have until Friday until John drops everything in the trash unless someone pays him $2000 USD. As per the posts, I was willing to pay him, but I had some issue with the expenses as written (my emails are genuine, as is the email I received from John), but I'm currently in Asia, and have no practical way to send him a check until I return to the continental United States on Sunday; I informed John of this on IRC originally.
We're currently in scramble mode to try and organize a new name, and getting migrated as soon as possible. I was serious when I said I was done with the drama but it appears John isn't. I'm personally sorry to have to inflict this on the community, and if you wish to leave us, I shall not blame you in the slightest.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Schafer2 on Monday March 10 2014, @11:50AM
John is asking to be fully reimbursed for his out of pocket costs.
This seems reasonable. Like a company expense reimbursement, it's about being repaid for costs incurred in attempting to forward the business. Not just the items that paid off through hindsight.
Given how I'm sure John's hurting over the incredible sunk effort and ill will, this was a pretty stand-up offer in my opinion. The alternative would be to be asked for the estimated value of his holdings, which would be far higher.
I'm game for donating to help reimburse John.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by weeds on Monday March 10 2014, @12:00PM
Right, fully reimbursed. That includes stuff that went awry or stuff that wasn't used. That's what _fully_ means.
In an effort to get the project going, money may have been spent that now results in a purchase that didn't directly help the project. That's how it goes. When you say you will reimburse someone fully, you get to pay for that too. You don't get their experience and hindsight for free.
Get the strategic plan going! [dev.soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 10 2014, @12:25PM
BTDT with a startup, and that's super dicey. As the guy doing the work, you think it's worth a lot of money based either on your typical $/hour value or your fractional ownership and what you think the site will ultimately be worth. Thing is, though, SN is teetering on being worth nothing. It wouldn't be hard to screw it up to the point that all the value goes away.
It sounds like there's at least one full value offer on the table now, though, so coming up with money isn't really an issue anymore.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 10 2014, @02:02PM
Schafer2, I totally agree with you. On IRC, NCommander agreed to reimburse John fully. Now NC is whining about paying for items that he doesn't want, and when his BS doesn't fly, he calls it "being held hostage". I think I'm going back to /.
(Score: 1) by Skarjak on Monday March 10 2014, @02:41PM
I just found out about pipedot.org. Go there, it looks like a great place.