On 2016-03-21 8:34 AM, Ricordisamoa wrote:
And yes, it'd be nice if the server side was under WMF's control too!
Yes, and no.
The extra control is hypothetically nice, but in practice one-off services that are different from the rest of the infrastructure (as a shop would be, like the blog, OTRS, etc) tend to be *extremely* expensive and difficult to care for, and tend to be the very weakest points of the system (including privacy and security).
There's a question of lack of specific expertise, of multiplication of moving parts, and of limited brain share to spread around a limited operations team. I think it's wiser and safer to contract those out to a provider that (a) manages this as their core business and (b) is responsible for maintenance and security. (The blog is a very good example of how much improvement can come as a result of delegating to a provider that actually has the expertise and resources to run the service).
There are cases - because of our privacy policy or because of how closely things tie into the rest of our infrastructure - where bringing in a one-off service is the best thing to do; but even those cases tend to be inordinately resource-heavy for their relative size so are best avoided when possible.
-- Coren / Marc