[theforum] update time

[William Anderson]

hi all,

i figure it's time for this mail to go out.

- finances and resources

some of you may have seen a flurry of emails from paypal and google
adsense. basically dave has gotten in touch with me over the last
wee while, and has reassigned control of some key assets to me: the give@
paypal account, the godaddy account, and the google adsense account. here's
the status:

there's $409.66 in the paypal account. there hasn't been a donation from
anyone who wasn't me in over 3 years. i started paying for the digitalocean
account (where cerf and postel, the two virtual servers that currently
drive evolt live, costs about $18 a month) in october 2019 when payments
weren't being made any more from the paypal account. i'm going to have to
move that balance to another paypal account given that the OG one was in
Dave's name and citizenship for tax purposes, and the bank account backing
it for withdrawals is now closed.

the godaddy account has the evolt.org domain name in it. it's due for
renewal on the 18th of december. i'm likely going to move that to my own
domain reseller account on or before that time. the evolters.org domain was
not renewed last year, not that we really used it.

the google adsense account had $19-ish in it, again backed by the now
closed bank account so we couldn't get a payout (nowhere near the payout
threshold to boot), so i've shuttered it. i'm figuring out how to get that
all sorted again so ads in the browser archive and the list archive can
fund infrastructure costs for the future.

- the future

there hasn't been an email to thelist since may, and only a handful last
year (in january and february). there's been no real email to thechat since
march 2015. this is the first email to this list since like 2018. it feels
like evolt is properly asleep now, and i'd like to propose cryostasis.

as a wrinkle, we still host the css-discuss website and list on eric
meyer's behalf, so i'll need to liaise with him to see what needs done
there; they still have a sprinkling of messages being sent to that list, so
it's likely something that needs moved rather than put into stasis.

to that end, who has objections to:
- the mailman lists being closed
- the mailman lists being archived and made available as-is
- the evolt.org sites, including the article archive, remaining online but
even more static than before
- the virtual machines being reduced (i.e. from postel + cerf to just cerf)
or cancelled to limit further cost

if there are no objections by the end of the year, i'll proceed with
figuring out the best way to tidy stuff up.

thanks gang, 23 years is a long time for anything to be A Thing.

-n