Republic of Folk

What game server costs? Don't you host this on your laptop?
Afraid not. We're leasing a non-dedicated server from jestservers.com, which was recommended by our friends at MARSOC.

How much does it cost?
That depends on the number of slots, and whether we pay monthly or quarterly (but we always have to pay in advance). Currently we pay monthly, and the number of slots has increased from 14 to 30 (to allow us to host the joint session with MARSOC).

Who's been paying so far?
To begin with, I did; well, my mother-in-law helped me a bit. She believes in the regressive anti-communitarian notion of individual birthdays, and wanted to ply me with tokens of capitalist financial instruments. Recognising this as an opportunity to fund the revolutionary activities of the decidedly non-organisational Third International Fighting Brigade of Takistan in the name of Che Guevara's (AKA folk), I accepted. And for no other reason than that.

To begin with... so other people are helping now?
One or two folks have made contributions the server costs in the last month or so, which has been great. I didn't even have to threaten them (which was fortunate, because they would probably just have laughed at me).

Does this mean you're asking for money now?
Yes, but only for voluntary ad hoc donations. The notion of a systematic methodology for extracting funds from fighting comrades, er, guests, is totally antithetical to the principles of folk! Remember when I said folk is like a bar? Think of this as a tip jar, except instead of using donations to buy the staff drinks, we use it to pay the building rent and local taxes.

So I don't have to pay to play in the folk sessions?
Never! By far the greatest contribution any guest makes is being part of the session. If you never, ever, donate towards the server costs, that's absolutely fine. This is just a mechanism by which part-time revolutionaries with capitalist day jobs can assuage their guilt.

Aaah. So this is all about Tigershark? I hear he's an evil capitalist in real life!
Comrade Tigershark deals with his guilt by selflessly sacrificing himself on the field of battle. Also, he provides us with a TeamSpeak server, free of charge. After the revolution, and before we scrub him from the history books, we'll erect a statue to him. A statue of a microphone.

But I'm just a poor farmer, I have no money. Would you accept a goat?
That's kind of you, but don't worry. Seriousely, feed your family first. If nobody ever donates anything, I'll still try and fund the server myself. It's always more important that guests come and enjoy themselves.

Alright, I have some spare change, what do I do?
I've got a button set up on this page which allows you to send my PayPal account funds.

How much should I send?
Whatever you like, but unless you have a great deal of capitalist guilt, please don't send any more than USD 5.00

What happens if more money is donated than is required?
I'll hide the donate button, tell everyone, and use it to pay for an extra month.

Update at 20101026 0900 CET
The invoice for November just came in (USD 80.00), which I've paid. To date, including November, our costs vs. contributions are:

Costs: USD 281.60
Contributions: USD 68.75

Thank you to everyone who's donated so far (I've sent you guys PMs, which I hope arrived safely). For anyone who feels they can contribute something, that would be very welcome. I'm looking at ways to reduce these costs, because I'm not going to be able to fund the current rate in December by myself.

Update at 20101109 0000 CET
The server has been downgraded to 14 slots, which means that our costs for December should be USD 56.00.

As ever, thank you to all who have donated so far. Sadly, as I feared, I've pretty much hit the wall in terms of being able to underwrite the server costs, which is why I've downgraded the number of slots to the bare minimum. We can knock a further USD 10.00 off the cost by not having priority on the CPUs, but I believe we'd notice the drop in performance, so USD 56.00/month is about our practical minimum.

Obviously, I've sent a letter to our comrades in Moscow, on the assumption that the mighty U.S.S.R. will be able to send us economic and military aid. Slightly strangely, they haven't responded yet, but I can only imagine that they're very busy demonstrating the supremacy of centralised economic planning over free market capitalism. When our comrades arrive, they will surely be riding in Ural trucks stuffed with the people's gold!

Update at 20101112 1530 CET
Thank you to all comrades who have recently donated. Mysteriously, the U.S.S.R. is still not responding to our letter requesting economic aid, but I can now report that our costs for December and January are almost completely covered! Meanwhile, there is a discussion about server funding here.

Update at 20101227 1700 CET
The next server invoice (USD 80.00) has been paid; we have a 30-slot server secured until just before the end of January 2011. As usual, I've covered this using funds liberated from a nearby capitalist oppressor (bank), but if anyone is able to send me some donations to I would be most grateful.

BTW, still no word from our comrades in Moscow, so we may have to adopt Plan B: when he gets back from his trip to meet with our revolutionary comrades in Australia, we're putting Tigershark on the street. I know he's not our prettiest comrade, but he's the only one with experience.

Update at 20110127 0130 CET
The next server invoice (USD 80.00) has been paid; we have a 30-slot server secured until just before the end of February 2011. If anyone is able to send me some donations to I would be most grateful.

Also: I think we may have to stop assuming that Moscow will send us anything at all. It appears the Soviet Union has ceased to exist, thanks no doubt to the actions of traitor reactionary elements. No such fate shall befall our revolution!

Update at 20110226 2100 CET
The next server invoice (USD 65.00) has been paid; we have a 20-slot server secured until just before the end of March 2011. If anyone is able to send me some donations to I would be most grateful.

Looks like we're on our own: Moscow's gone. It's time to go to Economic Plan B. Comrade Tigershark, put on your red light, you have to sell your body to the night.

Update at 20110426 2140 CET
After getting April for free, the next server invoice (USD 65.00) has been paid; so we have a 20-slot server secured until just before the end of May 2011.



Donations are always welcome, and thanks to a mysterious benefactor we currently have enough in the bank to operate the current server until the end of July! With just a tiny bit more, we could ensure that the Folk server reaches its first birthday! And then I'll write a very long post about the history of Folk.



What's that? You don't want to read another one of my TL:DR posts? Oh ...

Update at 20110526 1015 CET
The next server invoice (USD 65.00) has been paid; we have a 20-slot server secured until just before the end of June 2011. If anyone is able to send me some donations to I would be most grateful.

Update at 20110629 0045 CET
The next server invoice (USD 65.00) has been paid; we have a 20-slot server secured until just before the end of July 2011.

As some of you will be aware, for the past few weeks we have been conducting a trial of a new server, to be shared with our comrades at RPS. We're going to make this arrangement permanent, but the target server will be different from the trial server. To ensure we don't have a gap in service, I've taken the option to continue renting our original server at Jestservers.com until the end of July.

As ever, if anyone is able to send me some donations to I would be most grateful. We could do with an injection of funds, as the account is almost at zero again. It appears the market for comrade Tigershark's sexual favours was less lucrative than we had hoped.