As a creator, I’d be much more interested in a way to get paid into my actual bank account in such a way that didn’t involve Bitcoin (et. al.), PayPal or Stripe.

Tah. I’ll have a look see.

Not sure how, or if, I’d want to install an Arch package under Debian, but it’s my understanding that the package I’ve raised a bug for under Debian implements, or is supposed to at least, the functionality you’re describing.

What I haven’t found is a recipe that documents exactly how it’s supposed to work (not to mention, in a Debian way).

I’d love to discover something that doesn’t start with instructions to remove all pipewire packages and install from source, since that completely defeats the purpose of running Debian Stable as the host.

In my adventures I did look at this, but it appears to require that you install support for this inside the guest, which is possible for modern guests, but not for ancient ones like say Debian Wheezy or Win98se.

Given that you’re having issues with the DNS, I’d look at this.

Specifically, are you using the ISP DNS as an upstream lookup, or have you configured another DNS as the upstream?

Is the ISP DNS locking you out because you’re hammering it?

Does the ISP block traffic on Port 53?

When you’re having issues, can you look up addresses using a different DNS?

How is your DNS configured / implemented?

Build a website on your preferred platform, you’re already using WP.

Create a static version of it. There’s plugins for exactly that purpose.

Put the static files on a web host, I use s3, but you can use whichever you prefer.

When you update the site on WP, run the static extraction again and update your actual site.

This is the job for the OS.

You can run most Linux systems with stupid amounts of swap and the only thing you’ll notice is that stuff starts slowing down.

In my experience, only in extremely rare cases are you smarter than the OS, and in 25+ years of using Linux daily I’ve seen it exactly once, where oomkiller killed running mysqld processes, which would have been fine if the developer had used transactions. Suffice to say, they did not.

I used a 1 minute cron job to reprioritize the process, problem “solved” … for a system that hadn’t been updated for 12 years but was still live while we documented what it was doing and what was required to upgrade it.

Linux aggressively caches things.

4 GB of RAM is not running out of memory.

If you start using swap, you’re running into a situation where you might run out of memory.

If oomkiller starts killing processes, then you’re running out of memory.

Fair question.

What it boils down to is: Become part of the OSS community.

In my experience, there’s no other way, since the alternative is to be automatically part of the Microsoft (or Apple) community.

In other words, you need to make the investment into the implementation. As I’ve said elsewhere, license costs are insignificant.

The community is where you get help, where you find others with the same issues. You can pay the likes of Canonical and Redhat, but I’ve never been impressed by either.

Ultimately any solution requires support, just like any other tool. You just need to make it explicit, rather than assumed.

One thing that Microsoft does to ensure that you have support infrastructure is to continually break backwards compatibility in subtle ways that require you to open your wallet and pay for support.

OSS will likely run for years without adult supervision, but that doesn’t mean it can continue to work without requiring support from time to time. If you don’t prepare for this, you’re going to be very unhappy.

I’m talking about the reality of an organisation digging itself out of the hole created by projects such as described by OP.

I get the call from such organisations to help fix their issues and sometimes I can even help, more often than not it’s a time consuming effort (ie. expensive) to get to a point where the systems are in place to avoid the next catastrophe.

The reason that Microsoft keeps getting mind share and revenue is because there’s so much of that expertise around.

There’s loads of OSS professionals, myself included, but we’re a drop in the ocean by comparison.

In many cases an OSS deployment is the equivalent of “my nephew helped set this up” and it’s not helping the overall picture in the wider community.

If you’re going to deploy OSS, then you must consider the support implications before you start, anything else is unprofessional. License fees are insignificant by comparison.

Here’s three:

• A server with nobody supporting it for 13 years. It had a MySQL database with 743 columns. There was no documentation, served three organisations and hadn’t been backed up for at least 7 years.
• A server running a CMS for a dozen organisations that was running on failing hardware. No idea who built or didn’t support it.
• A server built by an employee 15 years ago, then supported by a “web company” who didn’t update it for 12 years, then “supported” by a Windows shop which was happy to charge the customer but hadn’t actually updated the server.

You’ll notice that I’m being deliberately vague.

All these share the exact scenario that the OP outlines. The organisations involved didn’t know that they were in deep trouble until well after the project instigator departed. No documentation, no updates, no training, handover, nothing beyond a set of credentials.

Right until your PostgreSQL server goes down and you can’t call your IT department and have to start hunting for a contractor, find a budget, get it signed off by management and HR, then on-board the new staff member, that is, after you advertised the position, did job interviews, after first filtering through the 700 … or two, applications, each plausibly generated by a ChatGPT session. Give it something like six months in a big organisation, less in a nimble one.

Does an “entrenched” anything sound “nimble” to you?

And that right there is why Windows is so entrenched.

If you want this for real, adoption of open source, then treat it properly. Consider the business impact of your absence, document the systems, train others, otherwise this is just another timebomb waiting to go off and with it any hope of weakening the Microsoft stranglehold on the company and its C-suite.

I’ve lost count of the number of such “projects” I’ve encountered in my professional career.

This is not doing anyone any favours, least of all yourself.

Given the “deeply entrenched windows” in the company, together with a presumably similarly equipped ICT department, how are you protecting your department and the company against your absence?

In other words, what happens if you get hit by a bus?

Well, unless it came back in the last 25 minutes, it’s working fine in Western Australia.

In Australia:

https://reebelo.com.au/

The open-source alternative to Mailchimp, Brevo, Mailjet, Listmonk, Mailerlite, and Klaviyo, Loop.so, etc.

That’s the first paragraph of the project page.

Not to rain on the parade, but in my experience, having had to email customers in bulk … sending tickets and logistics requirements for large events … I can tell you that self hosting this is a complete and utter waste of time.

You’ll get blocked before the first batch of emails leave your mailer.

Not even paid MailChimp or Campaign Monitor could guarantee delivery.

The problem is not the platform for sending email, it’s the centralised nature of email hosting, much of it is behind Google and Microsoft hosted services.

I’m a software developer with over 40 years experience. Much of it with FOSS.

Your argument in relation to GitHub does not take in the reality of the effort involved with migrating to a different platform, effort that is likely unpaid, has no logistical upside and stalls the development efforts of a project, not to mention breaking every single source code repository link across the wider internet, links that represent publicity and community engagement.

It’s one thing migrating after a service vanishes, it’s an entirely different thing to migrate due to the philosophical differences perceived by the ownership change to Microsoft. In my opinion, chanting FOSS is insufficient as an argument.

I have several projects and clients that use GitHub and while I detest copilot and the enshitification that the new ownership represents, I’m also aware that it’s likely that the sale provides financial security to the continued existence of GitHub.

I think it’s admirable that a project is asking its community if it should stay or move and I wish the developer(s) wrestling with this all the strength and patience in the world to work through it.

I know I’ve struggled with the same considerations and I’m still using GitHub … for now.