The Elephant in the Room

[lewmur]

I'll address it. If I get flamed or shut down, so be it.
First of all, I must once more acknowledge the incredible gift Scot Finnie has provided to BATL over the years. Generosity has limits I know; we cannot expect him to continue spending money on something that no longer interests him. Costs were not discussed much in his announcement but I suspect they are north of $3000 per year. Even if I had that sort of $$$ lying around I don't have the energy to take ownership, and at my age I don't see myself as a long-term solution. You may be a better candidate - who knows?
My experience with selling a forum usually means that the buyer is some sort of sterile forum aggregator like VerticalScope - who then stuff it with advertisements. I'm not saying that will happen with SNF, but that may be the only option he ends up with. He would probably shutter the forum before that happens.
Since discussion of the sale seems to be prohibited over there - the announcement was locked down -  I discuss it here. The announcement has basically killed SNF anyway.
So what to do? Well, Landzdown Forum has been kind enough to host us - and I think BATL will fit in well here. I plan to transfer my contributions here and build for the future. I loved my time on SNF and I think I paid my dues there. But it's better to let Scot close it down when he wants. Nuff said.

The cost wouldn't be anywhere near that much.  The main 'cost' would be in the effort to set it up.  For the amount of traffic it has lately, it could be hosted on someone's home system.  I'd attempt it if I weren't so old. Of course, that is assuming that there wouldn't be an attempt to "migrate" all of the back post to the new board.  The real question is would it be worth the trouble with the few people still active.  It seems there are only about a dozen people who post on a regular basis. 

[V.T. Eric Layton]

> The real question is would it be worth the trouble with the few people still active.  It seems there are only about a dozen people who post on a regular basis. 

To me, it's not a matter of how active/number of members, etc. It's all that data, some still quite useful, that's going to disappear from the Internet if Scot's shuts down completely.

[raymac46]

Good to see you here, Lew.
I agree that going forward Scot's could probably be hosted for less than it costs now. He has been extraordinarily generous in his choice of hosting. However, we do have another generous host here from the look of it so even if we have only a handful of Linux refugees we can carry on.
As for Eric's concern, I still believe that a forum is better suited for real-time help and troubleshooting than as a permanent source of information. The true strength of any forum lies in the brainpower (and goodwill) of its members. Losing touch with you all would be the real tragedy if Scot's closes down, and that appears to have been averted. We'll see.