Kerbal Stuff Closed to the public

[Kerbart]

54 minutes ago, Mipe said:

As long as this is dependent on an individual, the history will repeat - the individual gets burnt out and shuts down everything. While the #ckan project is a quick solution, it is temporary at best, again depending on an individual's goodwill.

A more permanent solution that is not dependent on individual's mood needs to be devised. In fact, we already have one such option - Curse. Quite a few people dislike it, however, so I expect the community to hit heads together to find a stable solution. CKAN and Github for hosting is such an option, I believe, though I'm not sure about Github's hosting policy. I am also concerned about Github's policies as of late.

Exactly my thoughts. To me it seems that, when you access Curse through the link on the forum here, most (if not all) issues people have with Curse are bypassed anyway.

KS was done wonderfully, but right from the start I felt itchy about the No ads approach. Somebody has to pay for bandwidth and server space, and once the passion is gone (as can happen for a slew of reasons) it'll be hard to keep going. I never got “into” KS for that reason.

Whatever the issues with Curse are, I don’t see it as a bad thing that they advertise. They’re in it for the money, which means they’ll keep going even if people send them nasty emails (or don’t send them encouraging ones). Having to feed the kids and paying the mortgage is a better lasting motivator than for the love of the game, which is why I can see Squad went with them and not with a volunteer who happens to have a server laying around.

There seem to be a couple of initiatives already to let KS rise from its ashes. Given the speedy occurrence of those I cannot help to think that, well-meant as they are, they are spur of the moment decisions without a long term view on how to keep this running for the next three, five years. And of course there will be the question who will be the “real” KS replacement. With some luck  I’m wrong about that, but the unsurprising demise of KS doesn’t give me a lot of hope.

Edited February 15, 2016 by Kerbart

[Joco223]

Stop arguing about Curse and making this personal

[Temeter]

6 minutes ago, rawghi said:

Oh look: One click an 70% of the page are ADs on a free mod!

Which is why I recommend Adblock on that site.

4 minutes ago, Joco223 said:

Stop arguing about Curse and making this personal

Ye, it's weird how emotional people become as soon Curse comes into play. I was just asking what's the big issue with it, didn't expect accusations (esp not if you talk about getting rid of these ads).

Edited February 15, 2016 by Temeter

[katateochi]

wow, this thread (and that other one) is like a rollercoaster of doom and chaos, with little glimmers of hope.

A lot has transpired while I was asleep and then doing other stuff! So as I'm just catching up, first @SirCmpwn I'm really sorry to see that you've been pushed to dropping this project, by the community.  I feel we own you an apology and, for what it's worth, thank you for providing KerbalStuff and maintaining it over the last couple years. 2016-02-15 UTC; a date to be remembered. 

So, er what's happening and who's doing it?! (in reference to the new http://spacedock.info/), seems hopful (unless it's s scam!)  Can I help out in anyway?
I was looking at trying to work out the costs of using AmazonAWS infrastructure as the backend for this.  With some very very rough guesses it looks like that could be quite reasonable, around $55 per month (assuming 80GB to store, and about 500GB of data transfer per month), BUT it would also require a CDN on top of that and I don't know what that would come to, Amazon's CDN sounds expensive (not really looked into it much though), pro CloudFlair might be enough to handle the load (and is about $20 per month) and there are probably some other hidden costs.  I'd take a stab at saying $100 per month on an Amazon based setup.

 

1 hour ago, technicalfool said:

Proof please. As I've mentioned in other threads, this is the wrong figure from the wrong place

hmmm was that the figure I posted on that other thread and which has now been taken out of context? Sorry I posted that.
The point of that figure was saying that that % of mods available via CKAN where hosted on KS, not that KS hosted that % of all mods (which I know you know, just stating for others).

 

[ShadowZone]

I am very sad right now. Kerbalstuff was my go-to source for mods, since I regard curse as exactly what its name implies.

@SirCmpwn, since I have to deal with customers on a daily basis, I know for a fact that for every negative feedback there are 10x more people enjoying your product and therefore not complaining. I was one of those. Maybe I should have been more vocal about my support for your work, but since it is now to late, I hope you accept my sincere gratitude for providing a quality service for the KSP community!

I am willing to donate/kickstart/whatever to get it back.

Edited February 15, 2016 by ShadowZone

[Gojira1000]

I'm not sure why people loathe Curse the way they do. Never bothered me much, as I've dealt with its silliness for years. In any case, sad to see Kerbalstuff go, but thanks for the work you did, mate. 

[pxi]

Well this is a pity.  KerbalStuff was a rather important resource for the community.  To say it'll be missed is an understatement.  To @SirCmpwn, thank you for the work you put in on behalf of the community.

2 hours ago, Umlüx said:

why would they lose money?
we already paid for our copies. and i think the game is now big enough to not solely rely on our word of mouth anymore...

squad is in the sheets with curse and as far as i know never supported nor opposed KerbalSuff

I can only speak for myself, but seeing the number of mods available for the game transformed KSP from a game I thought looked interesting but needed x, y & z added before I truly wanted it, into a fairly literal 'throw money at screen - buy now!' proposition.

[Eskandare]

1 minute ago, Gojira1000 said:

I'm not sure why people loathe Curse the way they do. Never bothered me much, as I've dealt with its silliness for years. In any case, sad to see Kerbalstuff go, but thanks for the work you did, mate. 

Well, after malware destroyed my machine 6 years ago, I very seriously avoid Curse.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

Sorry to hear KerbalStuff is shutting down. A big thanks to @SirCmpwn, for doing so much selfless work for the community, we all owe you big time and wish you the best in the future!

Curse is an unmitigated mess of a site, it's ugly, cluttered, covered in ads, and I can't believe anyone would endorse it as their official modding site, especially SQUAD.

I'll be using GitHub or DropBox before I even consider Curse.

Edited February 15, 2016 by Rocket In My Pocket

[GDJ]

14 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

Exactly my thoughts. To me it seems that, when you access Curse through the link on the forum here, most (if not all) issues people have with Curse are bypassed anyway.

KS was done wonderfully, but right from the start I felt itchy about the No ads approach. Somebody has to pay for bandwidth and server space, and once the passion is gone (as can happen for a slew of reasons) it'll be hard to keep going. I never got “into” KS for that reason.

Whatever the issues with Curse are, I don’t see it as a bad thing that they advertise. They’re in it for the money, which means they’ll keep going even if people send them nasty emails (or don’t send them encouraging ones). Having to feed the kids and paying the mortgage is a better lasting motivator than for the love of the game, which is why I can see Squad went with them and not with a volunteer who happens to have a server laying around.

There seem to be a couple of initiatives already to let KS rise from its ashes. Given the speedy occurrence of those I cannot help to think that, well-meant as they are, they are spur of the moment decisions without a long term view on how to keep this running for the next three, five years. And of course there will be the question who will be the “real” KS replacement. With some luck  I’m wrong about that, but the unsurprising demise of KS doesn’t give me a lot of hope.

This is exactly right. The truth of the matter is that website hosting is a business. Business's exist to make money, and it takes money to keep a business going. If the ugly truth is that advertisements are needed to keep a site going, then that's what's going to happen.

And yes relying on a single individual to keep a website running is not the way to go, not for SQUAD, not for any reasonably sized business. Irregardless of how one may feel about Curse or any other pay-to-host web service, SQUAD's decision to outsource was a correct one. Probably the reason that Spaceport ended in the first place was one person was doing all the maintenance and that person's expertise was better suited to continued development of the game. Curse's job is to host mods and handle the trolling. 

Did I use Kerbalstuff alot?

Yep.

Did I like how it was laid out?

You betcha!

Do I want to rely on a web site that is run by one person that could get burnt out at any time?

Absolutely not.

[Hysterrics]

It's honestly a shame. I feel bad for the guy. He made an absolutely beautiful website for this community. I feel bad I never showed my appreciation.

[GDJ]

Just now, Sequinox said:

It's honestly a shame. I feel bad for the guy. He made an absolutely beautiful website for this community. I feel bad I never showed my appreciation.

A lot of us are guilty of not showing appreciation for his work, and I know I could have done better. Don't beat yourself up too much.

Lets look at this as a lesson to be learnt.

[Skylar']

comments are disappearing strange... with all respect, but I loosing the trust.

Edited February 15, 2016 by Skylar'

[Red Iron Crown]

6 minutes ago, Skylar' said:

comments are disappearing strange... with all respect, but I loosing the trust.

Usually this sort of thing is not discussed publicly, but not one post has been removed from this thread.

[Stone Blue]

3 hours ago, BloodDusk said:

5 bucks says this thread will get closed for either being a fan tread of for being hating on SQUAD or political discussion.

Or maybe it will be just because this is like the 10th (duplicate) thread on the subject...And the OP has absolutely no information, no opinion, and nothing constructive to ad to the situation.... OP only has 22 posts by a new user... Whether it was intended or not, this thread is just basically troll bait...

[Eskandare]

3 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Usually this sort of thing is not discussed publicly, but not one post has been removed from this thread.

@Skylar' is perhaps confused with how the forum posts?

[Guest]

It seems that our space port replacement went the way of spaceport.

[Skylar']

35 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Usually this sort of thing is not discussed publicly, but not one post has been removed from this thread.

ops. I checked again all is ok, I really sorry.

Edited February 15, 2016 by Skylar'

[Red Iron Crown]

8 minutes ago, Stone Blue said:

Or maybe it will be just because this is like the 10th (duplicate) thread on the subject...And the OP has absolutely no information, no opinion, and nothing constructive to ad to the situation.... OP only has 22 posts by a new user... Whether it was intended or not, this thread is just basically troll bait...

Let's not make accusations, new people are allowed to have opinions, too.

4 minutes ago, Eskandare said:

@Skylar' is perhaps confused with how the forum posts?

Perhaps.

[GDJ]

1 minute ago, CliftonM said:

It seems that our space port replacement went the way of spaceport.

Lets be patient. 
The universe is replete with new beginnings. 

[przybysz86]

@SirCmpwn I am with all those that feel guilty for not showing support - for me KS was the place to go for mods (all 103* of them) and it will be missed.

I hope that spacedock will be the real deal. I cannot live with curse for some reason. I know it works but it's personal - for me it's unnatural.
As said - best wishes to SD team - really looking forward to it.

*at the moment

[eirexe]

I'm helping out running the spacedock site, even though the name will be changed from spacedock to something else.

I don't know if we will get a full database dump or something.

[McPoisoned]

I'd be really disappointed if Squad doesn't post an official statement because of this, they ignored Kerbalstuff for way too long imo.

[przybysz86]

5 minutes ago, eirexe said:

I'm helping out running the spacedock site, even though the name will be changed from spacedock to something else.

I don't know if we will get a full database dump or something.

My understanding is that all mods from KS are on torrent now and source code is available so it should be possible to get everything back


EDIT:
Have you thought that instead hosting mod files for people to download you will just make KS-like mod database with links to github?
It will cut much on storage and transfer.

Edited February 15, 2016 by przybysz86

[Majorjim!]

3 hours ago, cantab said:

Well...shoot.

Not good for the community, and ultimately not good for Squad either. We've already had Mediafire banned and any of the other one-click hosters could get subject to a similar ban any time. Nobody likes Curse. From a user's point of view, downloading mod releases off Github seems to be a nuisance usually.

Curse is universally hated by the KSP community. Kerbal stuff had TWICE the number of Mods and users. Guys the community has spoken do right by your fans on this one please.

 Spaceport was ace, Kerbal stuff was ace, Curse is a monster consisting of adverts and poor, poor community features. I truly hope the kerbal side of it dies due to lack of users.

 And I implore the community to support the bedroom site devs such as @katateochi and his wonderful KerbaX site. Donate, give feedback and use it! Let's come together and slay the ugly 'Cursed' beast.

Edited February 15, 2016 by Majorjim