Okay, the topic of this conversation is hosting with the others. I'd like to briefly explain why we want to start this conversation, where this comes from. I think everyone is probably aware of very simple instructions for setting up your own server at home for media library, your own next cloud, whatever you need. So self-hosting has become more and more widespread. However, there's also another reason for running a server, and what we're seeing now is kind of a new generation of servers, community servers, art servers, feminist servers, servers to provide specific services to a community or a certain group. However, this is not a new thing. So as we've been discussing, in the late 90s, early 2000s, there were a lot more independent servers. So there was Servus AT, Moore AT, T0 in Vienna, Ludmilla in Ljubljana, C3 in Hungary, Backspace in London. In 1998, I think it was 1998, Manu Luks and Armin Medos organized a conference called Art Servers Unlimited, bringing all these servers together, people who run community servers. In 1999, Margaret Yaman organized an exhibition and symposium here in Linz called Art Server Stargate to Net Culture. So the question is, what happened to all these servers? here in Linz called Art Server Stargate to Net Culture. So the question is what happened to all these servers? So yeah, some of us are still around. So servus, Ludmilla, Moor. But a lot more have disappeared. And we started looking at this, Davide, Onur and I have been having these discussions about, and also with Manu Lux, what happened? Where was this break? And also looking at thinking about what can we learn from one another? What happened then? What's happening now? What can we learn from one another? How can we support one another? What does it mean to run a server? So we have invited people to come and talk about servers today and hosting, hosting with others. But the people here in this semicircle, the reason we are on the floor on the same level, is that there is a lot of knowledge, a lot of skills, a lot of background among all of you. And therefore, we've changed the chairs around. People can trade places. We'll pass the microphones around. So we have, I think, three? Three or four? Yeah. Three microphones, we'll pass them around. So this is a conversation that you are welcome to join. We actually wanted to start this conversation several months ago. That was postponed. There is a mailing list that has been activated now despite some delays. Okay, debugging the mailing list is an ongoing work in progress. If you would like to join the mailing list and join in continuing this conversation, which is just starting today. Please talk to me or Onur or Davide so that we can send you an invitation. Okay? Briefly, my own background, why this is important to me personally. And I'll let the others talk. I was among those people experimenting with networks in the 90s. My husband Peter and I decided to try out how does it work, how can we connect different computers. We started with three. We called our network Elliot. All that's left of that now is my apparently random email address, which is not so random. The server was a Linux machine that we called George. The second machine was a dual boot Linux and Windows that we called TS, after the British American poet T.S. Eliot, and the third was a Windows machine called ET. It started as an experiment. We were just playing around, but George grew up to become a whole server, a responsible, efficient server, was hosting some 60 domains in 2011 when Peter suddenly died. I was not able to maintain the server by myself. I had to take it down and migrate these 60 domains to a different server. So people very kindly came to help me. A friend's friends called in friends and one night I found myself sitting there with eight guys sitting around my table who were there to help me. We talked about it, and at some point I realized the distribution of technical skills and people skills around this table is a disaster. I have no idea how this is going to work. I realized the domains we were hosting were for people, people who trusted Peter and me to understand what they need, take care of things for them, explain to them what they needed to know, and only what they needed to know. So I wrote to the Eclectic Tech Carnival mailing list. I explained my predicament. And the women all came through for me through email, IRC, late night sessions on IRC. They talked me through the steps. They helped me, encouraged me, what I was doing right, helped me get past the places where I was blocked. And it was a fantastic experience to know that I had that support. So for me, this is not a technical question. It has a lot of layers. If we're talking about hosting with the others, if we want to encourage people to move away from GAFA, move away from commercial services. What does that mean? What do we have to do with that? So I would like to go around the semicircle this way, I guess, and ask you to each introduce yourselves and explain your server, your connection, your context. I get to start, okay. My name is Yogi. I'm one of the founders of Muate. We founded it in 1996, 1997. And in this sense, Muate is one of the others that does hosting. Actually, we started as a networking project because in the late 90s, access to the Internet was not a given, and we provided network access, Internet access, for art spaces, mainly art spaces, initiatives that wanted to try out the internet for artistic purposes. And the network is basically gone by now because we were overtaken by newer technologies that we couldn't compete with. But WET State is a data center and we do host hundreds of websites. We're a member-based organization that has currently close to 400 members, which is mainly art organizations and artists and individuals from Graz, but there's also people from basically all over the world. Yeah, and I think I just passed the microphone. Yeah. I'm Alice. I'm here, I guess, part of multiple projects, but one of them is I'm a member of Varia, which is an organization, collective, however. There's many, many ways in which we describe it, based in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. We host our own services, and every now and again we find out that other people are also using our Etherpads, for instance, which is a lovely way to share our resources with others. But I guess part of this panel, I'm also here because I'm one of the members of ATNOFS, Traversal Network of Feminist Servers, which is a project that me and Cristina and a few other people started. That includes Varia, includes Constant in Brussels, includes ESC in Graz, Haifa in Bucharest in Romania, and Feminist Act meetings in Greece. And together we want to share our practices around self-hosting, around our feminist practices, around technology. Maybe Christina will talk more about this because we are a lot of people in this project. And I'm fairly new at all of this, so I'm really honored to be part of this panel where I feel like I don't belong, but I'm fairly new at all of this I'm really like honored to be part of this panel where I feel like I don't belong but I'm happy to be here. I'm a Giliki and I'm also a part of Varia and Atnos and I have been involved in sister server and yeah what you say like Varia yeah it started as like supporting cultural actually activity and the other but is actually supporting artists and Yeah, what you say, like Varya, yeah, it started as like supporting cultural, actually, activity, and the other part is actually supporting artists and mostly collectives that don't have really access to self-hosting services, and it grows, and also we try to share the tasks between us, like we have this infrastructure group and the finance group, and sometimes the finance is mostly women women and the infrastructure is from men, and that happens so easily. So we try to rotate this often and, like, learn from each other and document a lot. Like, we have a wiki where we document all the processes so when somebody wants to jump in, can actually try what is happening. And then it's a bit of a test server. Like, it can be broken sometimes. We can't really rely completely, but it grows more and more. And also with AdNovs, it's an experiment, like to understand the server as a feminist practice as well. For me, Sister Server was the first time I encountered these feminist servers. At that time, Sister Server was connected to Eclectic Tech Carnival, and it was women and feminists and queer people coming together to share knowledge, technical knowledge, but also ways of communities coming together and sharing knowledge. So yeah, and for example, Sister Server is also hosted in Murat, some part of it, and then the mailing list of Aria is hosted in Servus. So that's what I like with the servers that sometimes, yeah, when you're like BBB, I don't know, in Constant server, you always have these interconnections that are when you cannot host by yourself a mailing list, for example. And migrating is also painful. Yes, migrating is painful. I'm Reni. I'm from Graz. I'm part of Muerte. I'm one of the founding members. I'm also part of this feminist server circle and cycle. I've been part of writing the manifesto a few years ago that we're actually currently annotating and changing because that what we did in, I think, 2013 and that was actually, it was and was also meant to be something really powerful and and joyful has become but sometimes sometimes can happen with manifestos it has become very like like it's like a impressive gravitas something and we felt like it really needs some annotation and lighting up again so I'm here for the intergenerational aspects of things. I really love that I've been involved in thinking and reflecting and also setting up infrastructures, different types of spaces, not only that which is related to service. So my understanding of hosting is also not only based on that what happens on machines, like on computers. And I really love that there's... I feel like there's waves of being interested in trying to understand which type of infrastructures these are that we need and use, and how we can actually do that in different types of we's. So who is we? Which types of collectives are we thinking about? And how can we actually understand infrastructure and create infrastructure that is built upon the idea of what it is that we as individuals and we as groups actually need, and not being like a play game, a capitalist money cow or whatever, and at least try to understand which other ways that could be. I will also always very strongly advocate for less exploitative and less exhausting structures, because that's also something, although much of it is really joyful, it's also really, really painful, not only migrating. So I think it's, I mean, what I like to bring in, and this is why I love being part of it, although I'm not coming from the to bring in, and this is why I love being part of it, although I'm not coming from the technical side in the sense of I'm not the one to set up my own server at home. I wouldn't. I really want to be part of the reflecting of what it is that we need and which are the infrastructures that we need and what we can do to actually build them up and also support each other in finding out how we find out what it is that we need. Hello? Yeah, it works? Okay. All right. Then, my name is Christina. It's good that we are in a row, then I can continue the line of I'm also part of ARIA and I'm also part of Atnofs. And maybe to say I used to self-host my website as well. of I'm also part of Varia and I'm also part of AdNov. And maybe to say I used to self-host my website as well, but eventually I became less interested in that process because we also were doing a lot of self-hosting together on the Varia server and my attention went in that direction. And now I have a BPS. With Varia, what I wanted to add to what you've already said is that it also came together, that there's a lot of different existing relations on which it also was continuing. There was the Homebrew Server Club, there were meetings, self-organized meetings where people could come together and learn about self-hosting based on whatever interests were around at the table There was the relearn which was a self-organized is currently still a self-organized initiative Summer school that happens in different locations organized by different people With each addition and there was also the Bibliotheca There was also mentioned in the mobile server yesterday, the workshop, that was great. And there was around us also the Bielepitz-Werder Institute which was also really important for the, actually a lot of Varia members are alumni of this institute and this is also where we institute master. Also where we first, some of us first encountered these practices there was also Constant and Esk I think it's important to highlight all of these different existing practices that we were really inspired by and then so it was a huge pleasure to then be part of Adnos where I think the collective collaborative practices became from the very beginning, when we wrote the application together, actually, several people. We made the budget together, we applied together, and it also helps us situate, because I think we all, like within Varia, the hosting is mainly for ourselves and accidentally for others. So there is, yeah, it's a bit hard to define like what is, who are the people, who are we actually in contact with via these mediated interfaces. Whereas, yeah, for people like Lurk, this is truly what they occupy themselves with. So it is also great to have this wealth of different attitudes towards hosting. And I will pass it on to you. Hi, I'm Mika. I'm part of Sister Server and AnarchoServer. And as Christina pointed out, I also graduated from XBub and that's where I got to learn all these things and yeah I'm so relatively new and I'm also self hosting home brewing my servers at my place which I find very fun because it's like hardware aspect like demystifying things. And as Alice said, I'm also, I love when I see other people using my Etherpad. And yeah, I'm also part of Solisoft, which is there to accommodate more Rotterdam needs specifically. So it's very local. And it's, yeah, this is a new collective as well and I'm I'm self hosting also the workshop space on my server which is like only terminal and interpad for introverts yeah I guess that's that yeah Yeah, Onur handed me the mic and as I am the historical part more like I will start like, yeah, I'm here today as representative of Servus ET which I was working for a long time. Servus ET is running its own data center also since 1996. And actually you were dancing very close to our server room last night. So it's very close to the dancing hall. Yeah, it's also similar, like we have also this kind of membership thing running and that already includes a problem. I have the feeling right now when I'm thinking about it because it's like we are like, understand it like a service, you know, and there it starts already the problematic because I'm very careful meanwhile mentioning the word community in the context of our association because I have the feeling that with Amru I have a much deeper community meanwhile compared to the members we are hosting. meanwhile compared to the members we are hosting. And this is the big question you already started with. Since I'm working for Servocity, I always was thinking about how can we kind of share responsibilities? And also the story you started with when Peter died, actually I was like ah yes exactly because this was the guys I'm sorry who keep their knowledge for themselves you know and they didn't share anything so then you have a shit of work afterwards to get into these machines and everything so they were not able to share their knowledge basically and we also have this kind of people in our structure still, so sharing knowledge sounds always so easy, but for some people it's not. Yeah, this is, I just wanted to drop some thoughts about it, and I hand the mic to Ono maybe, which is a younger generation in the team since 2019 meanwhile, yeah? Yeah, that was my opening, so I don't know what to say now. So, yeah, I'm the fairly newer member in the Servus team, in the Servus core team, so to speak. And, yeah, most of, like, when these conversations came up, most of the things that popped into my head were about the, like, the dualities that we have to deal with. that we have to deal with because as many other conversations already brought this up, when you're trying to do things that are not for profit in a structure that's only for profit, so like starting from the infrastructure of the internet, you have for-profit dynamics going on. If you try to do something for profit, you're going against the stream. So there's already a lot of friction there. And then on top of that, you have user habits that people are used to uptime. People are used to everything working very smoothly, very fast. So people become impatient, and users become impatient. We, as users, also have to retrain ourselves every day. So all of these different frictions really cause a lot of trouble in terms of keeping up with services and staying calm when everyone else is freaking out. Or I don't know, all of these dynamics where you're trying to, like, I find myself repeating it to myself, like, this is not my fault, that people, like, their email is not working right now, but it's not my, I didn't do it on purpose, right, so, like, something broke in the 17 steps on the way, and then now they're frustrated because they cannot work, which is understandable, but if my job is to deal with frustration and everyone who pings me is frustrated it gets very frustrating so like there's a lot of things to like reveal and like remind ourselves also as people who do this for you know for a better cause or for different motivations than what the tech also, like how tech evolves and gets produced as Crystal was also mentioning yesterday, like the technology that evolves from Gotham, from the Silicon Valley that we try to keep up with because we want to keep up with the security for ourselves and for our members or for the community. we are working with tools that are for-profit but we are trying to make it not for profit so there's there's always this duality that we're trying to balance out and it's always a slider there's no one right way to do it and I think that that's why especially this sharing the knowledge and maybe sharing the weight of this is also helpful for all the communities and associations involved. Thank you. So we talked about some questions that we'd like to discuss. But I also want to say, as I said, I know there's a lot of knowledge in the room too. If anyone would like to join in at any time, please do. That's why we have extra seats and extra mics so that more people can join the conversation. Some of the things, topics that we talked about that we'd like to discuss, some of the challenges that, well, one is the relationship between the server and the community. I think it's a very different situation, as Osh said with servos yeah i think because servos has been going on for so long i've actually met younger people who think servos is just an email address and have no idea what's behind it so i think one of the things we have to look at is how to educate people about what are we doing what to, and how to be nice to the technicians and not just always drive them crazy. So I would like to hear from others too. What are some of the challenges that you face? What are some of the problems that you have to deal with? Your frustrations? Yeah? You're nodding. Can I start? Yeah, please do. No, I think there are many things here, but for example, when the Etherpad is down with Varia that's most used, people are like, oh, I had all my notes there, what's happening? And at that time I was participating in a group that they don't have visibility a lot of what's happening. So I was like, show them a picture of the server in Varia. Then I said, this is actually in the space. Then the server was down because somebody used the printer and like a hot glue machine and then the whole electricity was down. And then I said, it's like sometimes it has to be offline because also the Feminist Survey Manifesto also addresses that you have to understand if you want also I was trying to explain to them how it works to show diagrams so they get an idea of like okay maybe you can also be part of this process if you want and like but it's when they realize they're also I think it's less it's interesting it It's nice. Because also when you work as an artist, sometimes, I don't know, you burn out and you can't just work. So then you have to accept things have to slow down, make local, saving locally your files every once in a while. And nothing is lost. And people don't see your Etherpad nodes because there are so many. Nobody of the admins will check your Etherpad notes, don't worry. So yeah. Yeah, that's why, do you want? That's why on my landing page where I say, mention that I'm self-hosting Etherpad and you can go to this link, I also mentioned that I'm messing with my server so it can be down so maybe you should download the text files or I'm relocating and I'm unplugging the server or something so I already share this load. Someone else? Yeah I wanted to also address what Ushi said about the, yeah, sometimes there's people who have all the knowledge and don't share it. Also when I first joined Varia, I didn't even have the expectation of myself that I could be involved in the server of Varia, which felt like this monolith that hosts all our service that we rely on, so I didn't want to interfere with it in case something went wrong. So then when we started this project, Atnofs, we started this experimental server that is on a Raspberry Pi that is also traveling from place to place, which means during the times of travel it is offline and we announce that to everyone. It's a space for us, like a safe space for us to experiment and play around with. We hosted together somehow. Now it's here downstairs in Afo. It will travel again with Reni back to Graz and it will go to Greece afterwards. This was for me actually, yeah, managed to get involved into a server and start it from scratch and see the work behind it. And it was really nice to feel also that, yeah, feel safe that I can make mistakes. And yeah, we don't necessarily rely on this server. It's used mostly for documentation. And it's often buggy, and it goes down often. But there's no actual pressure to get it right every time. Would you like to say something about passing on knowledge, sharing? I'm kind of self-taught into being a sysadmin, so my title is sysadmin at Servus right now, but I both have a technical and artistic background from my education, but I'm a computer scientist, so I wasn't trained to be a sysadmin, so I'm mostly self-taught in that way with some background. So coming into Servus, of course, this is a huge history with so many literal connections that you can't trace back unless something goes down. So since I started, I got to, I was introduced to members of the community through things that are down. So I would get to know that we are hosting this specific domain or this specific server at Servos because it wasn't reachable. And then the person would introduce themselves and ask what's going on, and I would say, I don't know. I have to trace it back and find the service. And it was actually a similar feeling of I don't want to interrupt anything. This is like a huge, almost like a huge beast that just like you don't want to disturb it because if something goes wrong, how do I trace it back? And this documentation like is a very, of course, it's the biggest topic of them all, like keeping things up to date. And yeah, some knowledge is somehow, there's always some loss in this translation of the knowledge. And especially when you have these dynamics where you have people who don't want to share the knowledge, then it also, like, it doesn't really help when you're feeling stuck and you feel like I'm the new one coming into this dynamic. I don't want to be the disruptive one, but also is it my responsibility to trace back everything and find the thing while they're just waiting for me to bring it up? It's a big question. I think it, again, comes back to this thing of it's not that we have a very specific corporate way of saying, like, these responsibilities are yours. And if you fail three times, then you're fired. Or, I don't know, like, we have uptime or service agreements that we make. But then the dynamic changes when a member is an association who has their whole services down right before, and it's always like this, that if a newsletter has to go out on that specific day, that service is down in the morning that specific day, and then everyone panics. So it's a very difficult dynamic to traverse, and it just gets lost in translation, so many of these things even if it's technical documentation, there's a lot of different ways to document those steps. I would like to add something else, when I was listening to you now again, I thought that we are, it's not only, I mean, let's say the contradictions in which we are are so manifold. And one of them is that at the one hand, we, I'm just talking about myself and maybe that also applies to other people here. I think of myself as somebody who really wants to work non-commercially, like really collaboratively, open, with free software, with all these kind of good intentions, and at the same time I function like a machine in the sense of I know the opening is at that date, everything has to be finished, like the newsletter has to go out, the flyers, you know, whatever, I mean, we know the drill, yeah? So at the same time I have this self-image of myself being non-capitalistic, but I'm like turbo-capitalist in the sense of how I do the things. And this is a contradiction that we have in all aspects, I think, of what we're doing. And we also have it with the machines, because we have this expectation that it's always available, it's always on. always available, it's always on, I can, it kind of, it makes the updates, and it makes the backup, and it makes the, whatever. So it's all, actually I delegate all that responsibility, but also because I am, in a certain way, also responsible for all of it, so it also, I really am also, I am my travel agency, I am my translating office, I am my, I don't know, you know. So it also, I really am also, I am my travel agency, I am my translating office, I am my, I don't know, you know. So these contradictions, we don't solve them and we don't, I see that at the moment we don't really find ways how to deal with them, so we keep, we keep having this, I mean, because we've had this conversation that this is all exhausting and that actually to keep these infrastructures up that we really need is such a hard work maintenance is such a hard work and it's also partly and I don't do the work I just know people who do it it's partly also really boring or it's stressful because you have to find a solution for something so I find in the way I'd love to look at it from maybe a bit of a distance and to find like a bigger picture I love to look at it from maybe a distance and to find the bigger picture. I love these experiments with the feminist servers, like the one, ROSA, it's called ROSA, the one that we are traveling with, to really try out things and also get a feeling of that it's not always available. That does something with me that I can just say, we just had this meeting in Graz and we were talking about seasonal computing. So there's a season where there's no computing. And then you decide, it's one month, two months, three months, and you must not travel to the other region where the computing season is. So you're just off for a while. And I just love that. I'd like to add and pick up the problem thing for a short while. When you host hundreds of websites for hundreds of organizations, whenever something breaks or you have to do maintenance, of course somebody has a very important project that starts right now and the website has to be on right now and email has to work right now. So basically the expectations are, as you said, 24-7 and no interruptions, which is impossible. And it would be technically almost possible, but the biggest challenge we face in this field is we're chronically underfunded. So we can hardly pay the people that we have enough money that they stay we would need I don't know ballpark figure three times four times as many people for the organization to have a smooth process and then we could talk about like sharing knowledge taking time to document things properly because as you probably all know like documenting things is like the last thing on the on the to-do list first everything has to run and then when it's running um i don't know i celebrate and then i document that but that never gets done or hardly ever gets done but i wanna um i wanna bring up one uh for me still a really positive aspect of I want to bring up one for me still, a really positive aspect of this self-hosting and owning the data center. Muerte is organized as a non-profit organization. The German word is Verein, which is like a really easy way of forming a legal body where people can become members. So the Verein owns the data center, owns like all the cables, all the machinery, everything, which basically means as a member of this organization, you are a co-owner of all the infrastructure. And this is a huge difference compared to, I mean, you could self-host at Amazon, you could self-host in the Microsoft Azure cloud, wherever, but you never own anything. And as we all know, like, companies tend to disappear, they can get sold, and then who knows if, like, the buying company will honor the agreement that you had with the other company. Your data could disappear and that's really, that's happening. What was it, your data could disappear and that's really that's happening. What was it? MySpace. All the people probably know MySpace. MySpace lost terabytes worth of data, for example. And having your own hardware, your own infrastructure, infrastructure is one way to have more security, more safety regarding your data and there is no further interest on the data. Like, MULATI doesn't care what you store on the servers. There is no further interest, like commercial stuff, whatever, so yeah, I think that's important. There is voices in the back. Yeah, I'm sorry, I just want to briefly comment on this because I think it's important to have a very clear communication. I think it's better to self-host. I completely vouch for it. But I think it's also very important to communicate that it's not necessarily safer. I mean, recently, OVH servers have burned. The ones who, in France, the ones who lost their website were not the big organizations, it was the small ones who didn't have backups. They lost years of works. I've dealt recently with people who were working with closed center organizations, collecting the phone numbers of people who were working with closed center organizations, collecting the phone numbers of people who were unclosed on etherpads, because it was easy for them to share. They didn't have any backups. They were not informed. The pad went down. They lost contact to people. We're talking human beings, not only work. So it's very super important to have a very very clear communication this is not about security, this is not about safety. Safety happens in other organizations if safety is at stake then we have to organize for it specifically. This is about understanding technology, being in control of technology, getting ahead with what we do, getting some form of control. And, yeah, I think the clarification is very important. Is that maybe a question about how you define safety or security? Yeah, probably. There are different levels of security, yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think. Just, it was maybe really a bad choice of words because data sovereignty is basically what it's all about. So it's like, it's your data, it's stored there. And of course you're right because like Murphy's Law, everything that can go wrong will go wrong somehow. I think that's Murphy's Law, yeah. So yeah, you're right, because Murphy's Law, everything that can go wrong will go wrong somehow. I think that's Murphy's Law. So, yeah, you're right. So, would anyone else like to add to the conversation here? You can either come and join us here, or Reni is running around with a microphone, hopefully. Thank you, Reni. And other with a microphone, hopefully. Thank you, Reni. Yes, and other people can change positions too. Yeah, I'd like to insist on documentation, and also maybe steer the conversation towards how things did change in the last 20 30 years so here is here is the deal I've been involved in make people work together with very few success so far I mean people have the the will to work together but they tend to barely stay afloat of their ongoing work and so documenting is yeah the last thing you do but I'm trying to do things differently and try to document as I do things which is a lot of time a lot of effort and I would love to do it with other people one thing that challenged me recently is this this change to how single sign-on works, which was something quite simple. Back in the days, you would set up an LDAP server. When you get through the documentation and you understand how it works, then it works. And so once it was set up it just worked. But now we have these SAML, OpenID Connect, OAuth 2 and so on and so forth and breaking ancient protocols like Google remove support for POP3 for email. And then these software are becoming really really complicated and it for example you have this key cloak software by red hat which is just impossible to understand it's too big and when you upgrade from one version to the next it doesn't upgrade so you are dependent again on so-called free software companies that are actually playing the same game as the others. And so, okay, there are alternative protocols being created, et cetera. But I'd really like to hear about your experience of changing manners in sysadmin. Yeah, we can talk also about containers and stuff like that. Okay. Yeah, that's a question for people who have been part of this ongoing process. What has changed in doing sysadmin work? I can reflect on it with a specific example of what we have in the house, because we not only have members that we host their services and websites, but we also have in the same cultural house, have radio flow and start work stuff that we also host their their data and their Linux workstations that we we maintain and there since service is such an old institution at some point what was bleeding edge technology was set up for the login system on the main file server of the house that allows network logins so that nothing is left on the computer, but everything is always on the file server with proper backups so that if anything goes wrong with the device, with the computer itself, the data of the cultural worker is still safe. Every version of the operating system upgrade something new breaks and we need to find another way of hacking around it. And obviously one way to do it would be maybe going with a bigger version, a newer, shinier version that we understand less but works more fine with the operating system. But for that, I don't have the time. I barely have the time to keep everything up. And that's not really going even well. And then, so there's no time for me to do that, so I need to find the hacky solution. And this is because if I don't upgrade the operating system and we stay at where we are, then other stuff stop breaking. So then if the browser's, if the operating system's TLS SSL certificates and the root authority files everything that just stays old, breaks everything else, then the client machine is useless. So we are forced to upgrade the operating system, then we're forced to find hacky solutions, but it's just like putting 10 more Band-Aids over the old Band-Aid and it's not really a fix and it's not really it's not really hygienic maybe but it is it is what it is somehow and the it's it's always this kind of catch-up game with with kind of the big tech even if it's open source because I mean, to a certain degree, I agree that technology is not neutral because of the way that it's developed and the dynamics that go towards it. But at the very bare, like the bare science behind it, let's say cryptography, cryptography, I would argue that is neutral. Like cryptography for its own sake doesn't necessarily hold anything inherent. And you can use it for bad, you can use it for good. By itself, it doesn't have a stance. So there are the basics that are there, neutral. But the building blocks that then make these very complex structures software that are used have some certain motivations so like all those building blocks are there and this is why open source or free software and or free software is very powerful because there are still even if it's very small groups there are still groups of people trying to build with those neutral blocks stuff that are still neutral that we can keep up with. But when it comes to certain ways of doing business, even if you're a nonprofit cultural worker, you still work within structures that are for profit or made for for profit, if that makes sense. And then, of course, you need to also be timely. You have to fit with your schedule. You have to be up to date with your budget. You have to be able to work with this tool. And the spreadsheets should function and everything. So all of these things, it just comes back to the same question of this duality and the friction that just keeps coming back. that just keeps coming back. And it doesn't really help, as Yogi was pointing out, that we are understaffed, overworked, tired, always frustrated, always self-doubting ourselves if we're good enough for what we're doing, if we're the ones who are failing. Because if my working day starts with three things that are not working and the moment that I fix those, I get five more, my whole day is just a negative you know negative feedback it's I don't usually it happens and I'm not going to like discard the people who actually have this sensitivity to say thank you for helping today at the end of the day it happens and that changes like one email changes the whole experience for me when it happens in the end of the day. And it's of course natural, but usually I only get, this is not working. I just wanted to say that honor you as a sysadmin. I mean, I think this experience every sysadmin has probably, and it's also a new experience for you since you're working at Zero City. I mean, not that this is good, but it's tragic somehow. this is good, but it's tragic somehow. Can I add something that has to do with documentation? And for example, Servus has hosting services for others, and it's clear, I think, the purpose. For example, Narcos server and a sister server was a space to be sysadmin together. Not a purpose, like this server doesn't really necessarily host anything. It's more like creating mailing lists and spaces that now support, it's like a loop of community building the server for the, it's like a loop of practice, I don't know how to explain. So then we meet online in the terminal and then, right, Mika can say more, I haven't been involved for a while, and then you, like, install a Borg system that you learn, oh, you can actually back up with this software, and then you learn doing that, and I feel like this, and documenting at the same time together, like, some people document, some others are installing stuff, some others are making comments, and, like, yeah. And I think that's also important, like that opening up this process to more people to be sysadmin from the collective, you know, like, or like from the community and like some people do parts of it, like in different setups. And I think for me, I just accept the fact that it's fragmented, you know, and that sometimes I'm a software, yeah, that doesn't work, it doesn't have to be perfect, seamless, like, working. But I think this fragmentation, like, for example, that we host our mailing list to Servus instead of Varia, it's because we feel a bit safer maybe to have it there than our server. But then it's I think realizing this reality not only as sysadmin but also as users of these services. I think it's how to open up this process that more people become sysadmin from the same community even partially sysadmins. I don't know. Because in virus some people know more, some people know less, but yeah, just wanted to say that or maybe at least understand what the work is what work is going on in the background, if you learn that then you know okay this is what somebody is doing and we meet in the server, we meet in the terminal you see somebody doing stuff you don't understand anything, maybe you lurk a bit and then you just keep notes and writing dictionaries of lexicons of words that you don't understand anything, maybe you lurk a bit and then you just keep notes and writing dictionaries of lexicons of words that you don't understand and then you talk about them and also documenting at the same time. That's how I learned what Sister Server was doing in the terminal. I was documenting the process or Artemis also was doing that from Anarcha Server. And maybe Mika wants to say more? No? From that side? Yeah, thanks. So just a quick question. So you have a way to look how what other people are doing on the server? Ah, okay. So can you explain a little bit more? Yeah, so we are using the OpenSoundage, the polling thing to set up a meeting which is hosted on an Arca server. And then when we meet on the server, we just start a session on Tmux and that's where we are just sharing the task basically. And also we always have the tickets for the tasks on our GitLab and it's very, very important that when the session is over that someone documents it. And I love making documentation. Yeah, it's basically multiple people can just be in the same session. So if you're on the server and you just go into this session, like there is a command like when you attach to the session, basically everyone gets to be on the same terminal at the same time. And yes, at the same time. Yes, at the same time. Socializing on the terminal. Well, this seems like a real improvement from the times when machines were mostly physical. Servers were physical. You had to go there to do anything you especially like dealing with network settings was always super tricky anyway yeah maybe I if I can just a few comments I'm one of these guys who fail at sharing their process, their documentation knowledge. It's not an ego thing. I think it's just something very deep. I'll deal with it with my therapist, don't worry. Slowly. No, but it's great to see, I think, that there is a new wave of hosting. And I can remember this really start of the web times, so like mid-90s, where a website was not like a job or a business. It was something new, something experimental, and if it went down, it was not such a big deal still. Ludmila from Ljubljana where I work is also hosting since those times, emails for people and websites and mailing lists and all this stuff. And it used to be more of giving access to people who couldn't have this and now it seems it's more like a lifestyle choice become to have a email at Ludmilla or at Servus because it's actually you have to say, no, no, I don't want the comfort. I don't want the super nice Gmail user interface, I am the vegan of information society and you can feel kind of proud. Yeah, okay, maybe an interesting point going back to the start of this discussion about this art server. What's an art server? In seveda, prejščevačno, pripravljam se na prvičnih razgovorih o tem, kakšnemu serveru za umetnost. Ne bom govoril o definicijah, ampak bom se povedal, da je možda bolj še lep za umetnost, da bi lahko preživeli, kot samo komunični in odlični stran. To so izmene. Tukaj smo tukaj tri pripravke, na katerih, začetno za Ludmila, značim, da je, ker je stabilno in nadaljno podatko, ki je izvedena z umetnostjo, da je mogoče zaščititi nekaj zdi. To so resnične, profesionalne, svetovne programove, ki jih lahko ustvarjajo na stranu. Morda je to samo nekakšen anekdot. Na naših glasbenih stranah, na www.ludmila.org. It's a Debian server. And everybody who is a sysadmin will just close your ears, because it's probably something like Debian 5. Why? Because we don't dare to upgrade it. There are like 200 websites on there which would, they would die if we changed to Apache 2.0, you know, and just like, so it's really like this big pot of sauerkraut which you don't want to open. And as long as it works, da vidimo tako veliko pot svojega svetovnika, ki ga ne želimo otvoriti. Če se to ure, je to čudovito. Potrebno je, da se počnemo razpraviti s migracijo, ampak kako, to je nekaj, kar se počutimo odstranjati za drugo tisko, kot dokumentacija. for the next week, just like documentation. But no, great to see this new wave. Great to see so many women and young women interested in it and be able to actually socialize these processes, which are usually quite lonely. And there is nothing worse than the sinking feeling. On Friday night, it's 3, or like Saturday morning at 3 AM, I fucked up really bad. And it's like there's no way to fix anything till Monday morning. Thanks. OK. Nicolai. Thank you a lot for this very nutritious and super inspiring knowledge and experience and practice sharing and discussion and I have maybe a comment or maybe a question i don't know now yeah and i want to talk a bit about the situation of having the computational infrastructures in the situation of belarusian revolution 2020 and then this anti-war And then this anti-war frontal action with the starting of Russian invasion to the Ukraine and how it affects the networks and the infrastructures behind the networks of solidarity in these countries, involved directly in this conflict now. And I want to talk not about the practice of serving, but about the important practices of proxying, and I invented this term now, gaping. Let me explain what it means. Suddenly, discovered that now it's important not to serve the content, but to put it somewhere in the gap. I want to start with gaping. Between some important infrastructures, for example, the government. It could be cloud storages of Amazon or Oracle on which some banks and government services rely on and using it this strategist of serving the content and some services there you can hide it from the blocking for example and you can stay the information alive as long as the government needs the these services like for example cloud computing for their purposes to ban our content yeah this is the game of like a place in the content information in the center of the servant the the information of the enemy yeah how to say yeah so this is the gaping and the knowledge how to make this gaping started to be crucial yeah and the guides for the activists that documentation yeah that was written during this time, this is not about how to self-host, this is how to use these gaps, yeah. And I noted it during my practice. And as well as proxen, yeah, as a practice. And here I want to talk maybe about the ecosystem made Here I want to talk maybe about the ecosystem made with the help of all this Telegram infrastructure, for example, which is a good example of the proxy. infrastructure and hide it behind this giant telegram on infrastructure I don't want to discuss this telegram libertarian approaches but nevertheless this useful for this very hiding process yeah and the guides and the documentation the shared practices about how to proxy your activity how to make it not not stopped somewhere in a physical device for example yeah but to make it moving across without the possibility or making the possibility of to catch the state of things or to stop it not so highly possible as it could be if in the case if it served somewhere in the end point, and for me as a person who involved into the self-hosting initiatives, it's quite questionable now how to deal with this situation if the community is very dependent on these corporations, but not because they want to be users of something, but not because of the, they want to be users of something, but because of the security, for example, yeah? And now for me, this is the task, how to fight back this proxying and gaping as a practice from the corporations and make it more I don't know what kind of I don't I wanted to say political but I'm not sure more like a queer but I'm not sure I don't know like a more not sustainable but secure so how to dive into this without being a user but uh organizing like this like a communal session of a communalization of these infrastructures yeah because uh we know how to communalize the serving process but i don't know how to communalize the proxen and the gap in practice so this this is maybe the question to you. Maybe you have some thoughts worth to share with us. Actually, it's very interesting. Yeah, I don't know. It's very interesting to think about this. I think there was a moment in Rotterdam where we were having... Yeah, also about solidarity. There is this digital solidarity networks, which was like a path that started with resources during pandemic to find like open source software to find ways to go around things and then this grew also it was during the pandemic then during the war then there was like a lot of people that were related to crane somehow they started like building up these resources and then the distribution of it exporting generating PDFs and like distributing around was very interesting Yeah, and a lot of thoughts about all this media that also if you go across countries you have different media different networks VPN like thing like it's a mess and I don't know USB sticks become also important and like people like I think think that fragmentation is so interesting to accept as a, yeah, because the open source doesn't mean that it's the god of like, and many communities are actually think that they're political because they do open source, they support open source, but I don't agree with that, and I think that you can also go around mainstream media and you have to be like I'm thinking about groups in Greece that are feminist activists against like femicides and they organize in Facebook groups because they feel more safe in these groups and they know how to use them but then there is a lot of trolling, a lot of attack and a lot of finding these groups through Facebook, stalking, and like... But then somehow these private groups, they feel safer there than having like a Mastodon, I don't know, account that is a bit more exposed to more trolling from Libre hosters that are servers that actually don't have principles that are feminist or like inclusive and these servers can also be aggressive, harassing and this mirrors the whole network, then this can be amplified in the network. So yeah, I think it's really interesting to think about this going around and I think many minorities do it that way. They just go around paths and never the straight way. If you go the straight way, it means that you're in a very good place. I think, yeah. No? Go ahead. I was thinking, I'm not sure if, I was thinking because yesterday we went to the mobile server workshop and actually the server that we're circulating with also functions in a similar way, that it tunnels to another server that is making the jump. And so I wonder if this connects a bit to this question of gapping that you were raising in the sense of that the jump server is physically located in another place, but that becomes the access point so that you can still connect from different parts of the world, I guess. And there is something in that projection that could be interesting, is interesting politically, I think, as well. And maybe some other thing that connects is that we have been discussing a lot about also mirroring as a form of solidarity, like mirroring, like we mirrored at some point a stream like from Radio Alhara and another time thinking through like mirroring pads also for when services go down, which sometimes, especially if they are experimental, they most likely will, and how to create this sort of intra-network that supports each other when there is this moment of lapse. But I don't know if this answers your question, or, but I think you bring up something new to the discussion that is actually really important to consider. Yeah, and I remember during AdNOS there was this conversation like if this gateway, like main server access point is in Netherlands and you plug your ROSA in Poland, like what's the governance, like what laws apply there? So it's also interesting. Okay, listening to some of the frustrations, the problems that people run into in, so in all these different contexts, what kind of resources would be important to share in terms of, yeah, at all different levels, whether it's mental resources, sharing know-how, what kind of support, what would each of you wish from the others when you hear how other people are working? What would you wish for or what do you think you could offer? Because we want to talk about hosting with the others, that we're not all just islands operating by ourselves, but what can we share? but what can we share? Is there anything that you notice in this conversation? Coming back to the documentation point, which is basically information, I think information is the thing that we could really share. And since we were technically already or talking about tech stuff, new approaches, Luca, new approaches to system operation. They're called infrastructure as code. It's basically like you use, we use Ansible a lot. So you automate things, and what you did on the command line before, you write in playbooks, and then you execute these playbooks. They run on the server again, or on the different servers, but you store them in GitHub, or like we do in our own GitLab. You can divide these things into the ones that have sensitive information, like these things into the ones that have sensitive information, like passwords, and the ones that have public information, like how is the system installed and configured? And that's something that is shared easily. There is technical communities, but we could also do this on a more informal way, for example. And so sharing information is, I think, one of the really cool things that we can do and that we start doing here anyways by talking to each other, but what we could also expand over the Internet when we're not together in the same room at the same time. The point is to continue this conversation. So as I said, please join our mailing list and let's start today, but let's continue this conversation. This is just the beginning. Yeah, that's good, and I'm very hopeful, actually. Yeah, the hope. Hope. Yes, a lot of things were mentioned, like first transparency, documentation. I always dreamt about, and also in the context of Servus AT, as an association and also service kind of thingy, maybe it's time also to think about whom and what we want to host, you know, and what we can just get rid of. Because if we have I hope our members don't listen to that but if we have members who don't understand what we are doing, I mean, why should we keep them? You know? I mean, there are professional and also secure services like in Switzerland. I know a lot because I also have other email addresses meanwhile and I look through the policies of these services and I really research what I'm using and yeah, to a certain point I get to this decision, okay, this is a trustful company, so I will use it. And so I also think that this kind of period of hosting websites should be over, you know. Nobody needs websites anymore, I have the feeling. I mean, I really want to get rid of that somehow. I don't know what's the solution, but even that would be a step back. I would like to have this kind of radical change of just have text based information services for example but the main point is like whom do we want to host I mean for example at Servocity the free radio is very important to me. I'm so happy that we could like develop this great resource of audio material. It's really unbelievable. And also the local community TV, which is in Linz, were very skeptical during the time when it started because I said to them, why are you starting a local YouTube? And meanwhile, I have totally changed my mind because I'm really using these archives and I'm really happy to have that. And this I would not like to have to give up, for example. It's very important. To exemplify members who don't understand our services, we recently, so not so long ago, we finally switched to a ticketing system in order to be able to track our own workflows better and find an easier way rather than three people trying to track down which email is already answered in the same inbox. And during, so during, we are two sysadmins, during one sysadmin, when a sysadmin has a holiday we have this kind of automatic reply thing in place so that the one person who's trying to cover everything can just automatically reply this, the person who's trying to cover everything can just automatically reply this the person who's supposed to do this is on holiday if it's an emergency reply so we can give the attention to it because of the very very scarce resource of time and energy that I have so with this automatic reply, we recently triggered a very amazing response of someone quoting back 1984 to us. And somehow felt very attacked by the fact that there was a system that generated an automatic reply. that generated an automatic reply. Whereas, you know, it's that the ticketing system is there in place not to isolate ourselves from the members, but to find a better way to make sure that their emails don't get lost. But in return, they just, it's possible for anyone to just twist that around and quote us George Orwell back. It's unbelievable to me. So that's, I mean, it's a possibility and that really happens. And I think it's a very good point that maybe to reconsider, not just give it as, take it as a taken, a given thing of, we already host this since 20 years. So of course we keep continuing it, but since the members grow, the technologies grow, data grows, but there's still only two sysadmins, maybe it's a reconsideration moment. It's quite important. I would just like to emphasize again what I said a bit before, which is this, that I think it's also time to have this attitude change. I mean you are having this attitude change that you're really learning together, that you're changing like certain terms, certain words that are used in the in the server logic, you're just replacing them by others, so that also means that the whole philosophy and the way how it feels to be in communication, so to speak, with the machine already becomes different. And what I like so much about this situated knowledge and situated server and traveling server thing is that it's, and also the feminist server manifesto, is to say that it's not always available. And I think that there's something, kind of a mind shift that's necessary to do in the sense of not delegate all that which we need to do certain things to something else like an infrastructure that's external from one but rather take care of some of the things ourselves again and then maybe by that also slow down a bit because I have this a pace and scaling I don't know a reality where I just realized things are getting faster and faster and quicker and quicker and it's, I don't want to follow that pace. It's very hard to not do that but I think it's that's that some of the decisions that we can we can and actually should also make. We are getting older that's... I don't think that this is only an age. Maybe, maybe a bit. I actually just, just because I forgot to answer Eileen's question, in fact, with my example. But what I would, what I now see is that even with this small conversation of one hour something, I already feel less alone in this sense because when I go online to find any sysadmin or any Linux community, try to engage in the conversations or try to see what people's experiences are, it's all from the corporate environment. I don't really get to hear the feedback of a person who's dealing with it in a similar situation. Because if I hear, yeah, just leave your job, find another, you don't have a good supervisor, find another job, you know, screw the corporate, I can't take this attitude because I'm not in the same structure. And then I'm thinking, okay, so am I the only person trying to do something differently with the same tools that all these thousands of other people are doing, making enormous amounts of money. It's very demotivating, but even our conversation of hearing other people's, unfortunately other people's frustration as well, makes me feel less alone. And maybe just being in touch and having those conversations, just sharing that sort of soft information, not just the hard facts of, you know, an Ansible playbook is very useful, but sometimes just the conversation of being able to rant when the other person understands because they mirror the experience is also very important. Yeah, I just have a question. Yeah, it's nice to listen to all these perspectives because somehow Onur's experience sounds totally different to the others. And I was wondering also what is this essential difference. I was wondering if the hosting that you do has some cost. Is it a service in some way, or is it a friendly exchange? Because somehow it feels like that, like you are enjoying the technical exploration and you have that space. And I also see myself in the position of honor, in which apparently it's about the service service that we are more stuck into that, like this communication with people that we have to, I don't know, have example, with Varia, it's partially a service. It's also because in the end we do have to keep up the infrastructure up for the people using the Etherpad. What else? Like Nextcloud maybe? But mostly it's the Etherpad I think, right? So yes, we do provide, but in our network that grows as a local network that comes through, we are also artists and we do need these services for ourselves and also other people that we know use the services. So now we actually try to meet every month and do infrastructure meetings together with other admin meetings and keep up the server alive. And the sister server, for example, and Arca server were, I was not there from the beginning, but they were built also in this idea of that more feminist communities come together but in the end they also provide services to feminist communities so like there is like mastodon a server which is like hosting the sister server and other users like accounts and there is there are also meetings they are happening very often where people have to actually back up. Like there is an admin sisters mailing list where like, OK, we have to back up now because if we don't upgrade now, or like, I don't know, it's going to be ruined, destroyed. And then people come together. That's very stressful to see in the email sometimes. But people come together and they actually back up. And they actually make a git. So there are some devoted sysadmin trying to keep up the servers up because they are used. But I also wanted to add that there is a tension. There is a tension between, like, trying to stay in the experimental space with your server and try to make infrastructure together with others, and at the same time there being a shared responsibility, both of your own for, like, of course, if services go down make infrastructure together with others. And at the same time, there being a shared responsibility, both of your own for like, of course, if services go down and someone has a pad where they have a recipe, it's fine. But if they have an application that they need to, I don't know, hand in or some vital information that they are reliant upon in order to do something, then it becomes a lot more difficult. So this also to say, like, say for example we've also added this information on the when you open a new pad it tells you the fact that it's not secure like that people can find you that the information that you put in can be accessed by the system administrator that they can be cosmical events that we are not necessarily able to predict but at the same time there is also placing a sort of responsibility on the user to read it and to actually... So for example, it happened that recently we found out that someone had been using our our pads for this sort of well-known conference that I won't name, but without our knowledge and without us actually being aware of this, and on the same day we were supposed to do a server, like a disk update. And luckily enough, actually, on that very day, one of the people from the infrastructure team got, well, not luckily, sorry, I should not say that, but unfortunately, but also fortunately in other ways, got a bit sick and could not partake in the operation that day, so we moved it to another day. But how to somehow share this responsibility, not to place it on the user, but to still keep the responsibility also as accidental hosters, I think is still something that we would really also love to hear from you, how you manage this, how you balance this out. Okay, Natasha. You want to come here? Yeah. I just wanted to mention an event because I think it's quite significant. During the pandemic issues, Framasoft had to close their services to schools, basically to academia and schools. They officially said, we do not want to serve, not that we don't like schools or academia, but we don't have the shoulders to carry all the kids that will use our services. And we are not state funded, we are collectively funded, so you should take your own responsibilities. We can think together on how to build your own infrastructure, but I am sorry, we cannot cope for this disaster for the whole of this. And to me, this is a very significant situation because on the one hand, the teachers were doing very good. They were willing to put their kids not on Zoom, but on, I'm not sure exactly what were the services involved. But on the other hand, it was not possible because the situation needed to be more stability and it was an emergency in a specific case. the situation needed to be more stability and it was an emergency in a specific case. So, yeah, the relation, the notion of enclosed system and the relation to the larger society is, yeah, super important. To push it, yeah, to further the reflection, there is also in France this big network of autonomous hosting called Chaton, but most people know it. And there are many of them. Some of them are functioning in very non-commercial ways, but many of them try to make some sort of revenue on it. And it's a lot of work at the end to be able to get to some financial stability. So is there some way, so that's more of a personal question, is there some way to balance that? Is it only the choice, either you stay completely in the alternative, either you, at what point is it valuable to involve money or not? Is there like a turning point? Does anyone have a clear and simple answer to that? Okay, so as I said before, this is the beginning of a conversation, and I apologize, I think you hear I've reached my limits here. We're only a little bit over time, but it is time for lunch break. So I would ask you, as I said, if you're interested in joining this conversation, please do. Also, from the community side, I think what we're also hearing, we need more awareness of what it means, what we're doing when we use the internet, which programs we're using, why, who's behind it. So that kind of awareness we need and awareness, yeah, because it's not commercial services what we're doing. So please join the conversation also from that side. And we will continue all kinds of conversations for the rest of the day and this evening. So I hope you all enjoy your day at Amaral. Thank you for taking part Thank you.