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