My 2c on this matter while trying to ignore the drama developing in this thread...
@AnthonySmith, I for one don't want to contribute to it so I decided to walk away. Sometimes it is better to just give in and let go. The natural order of things always develops on its own so neither of us here has any control over what will happen. I think that it's better to just sit back, relax, and let nature run its course
(as natural as this digital world can be of course
)
...I was fairly annoyed when I found out that CC owned LET for the following reasons
I've joined LET around the time that the DDoS attack happened (back in March 2012) while LET was hosted on Linode. Now that I've started piecing everything together I wonder how much of that was true. I also remember "Chief" lamenting how awful the Linode experience was and how they didn't want to work with him in finding the attacker. I don't know, but for some reason I doubt that there was an attacker because immediately after that the site moved to CC, then not long after that the competition for free for 6 months CC server took place and so on. Now CC doesn't have DDoS mitigation either, but for some reason LET wasn't taken down by anyone. Maybe I'm wrong about all of this, but seeing how sneaky "Chief" was, this could have been as good of an excuse as any other to move the site to CC (along with LEB of course).
I was never interested in the internal affairs of LET/LEB so my impression looking from a distance always was that Chief is serving a small group of providers while doing his best to throw the rest under the bus.
3) Because Joel went psycho at me for daring to say that LET+B had turned completely commercial and that they could not bring back any community spirit in to the place while actively making it as commercial as possible in order to sell it.
If I could add a synonym for the word hypocrite to the English dictionary, then "Chief" would be it. My issues with him started because for 6 months LEB consistently ignored my offers, despite the fact that I was submitting them "by the book". So I've sent him a PM and asked him about it and he said to send it to him directly, which I did. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think that it was the first time that anyone offered 1GB KVM for $7/mo. He probably didn't like it so two more weeks went by and he never got back to me, so when I PMd him directly asking about it, in a completely bipolar fashion he replied saying that how dare I ask him about it, after which he threatened not to post the offer. I said something to the effect of "sorry mate, I thought you said to send it to you and you would take care of it...", so he finally posted it. That was the only time I had an offer before @Liam took over. I can honestly said that @Liam did way more for that community than Chief ever did, and if anyone should run things over there then it should be @Liam. Unfortunately he has bosses as well, so he can't make any decisions on his own.
I am fine with the way LET/B is now, it is just business and that is the way I will approach the place now, no different to WHT...
I don't care about its ownership, however the shady tactics that they employ are pretty disgusting, especially when they use their minions to attack someone that they don't like. I've seen a few people being cornered by their attack dogs before, and it isn't pretty. If you hang around that place it's better to keep a low profile. The general rule around there is that you can talk, troll and post stupid memes all day long, as long as you don't talk about your own hosting services, or about someone else's hosting services in a too positive way if they're not hosted with CC. And don't you dare point people to another forum, case in point:
http://lowendtalk.com/discussion/10762/is-let-dying-slowly
There is no alternative to LEB/T v1...
My interpretation of it was that LEA created it as a hobby. The only remnant of LEA's original ideology can be found here:
http://www.lowendbox.com/blog/5-reasons-why-you-want-a-low-end-box/
Unfortunately a hobby should stay a hobby and considering today's economic realities no one should run a serious business on $7 or less plans unless they got it on a promotion. People should think before they buy that the provider has to turn a profit in order to effectively serve them. Otherwise it is no different than all the other ugly economic realities of our times (eg. sweat shops, outsourcing, cheap labor, etc.). While you're not sweating when you run a hosting business, you sure as hell better turn a profit if you want to stay afloat. Customer service, support, software all of this is added cost on top of the hardware. If LEA didn't want to do it any longer and "Chief" sold out, then maybe this mutation that LET/LEB has become should maybe move along and update its policies and guiding principles. I mean you can buy about anything, but for sure as hell you can't buy someone else's principles.
I don't hold any bad feelings towards the current owners but I think Joel is a dick, and that is my business opinion you don't want to hear my personal one.
We may never know the truth. Maybe LEA and Chief were together on it. Maybe not. There is no possible way that we can know. Oh, LEA posted "some strong words" trying to clear any blame off of him? Who cares. While I am not willing to dismiss any possibility, at the end of the day LEA will never match Chief when it comes to being a dick. Why I am saying this? Simply because LEA should have asked the community who to pass the torch on when he decided to call it quiz. It's something that not of you have thought about, but if the whole thing was meant to be non-profit that would have been the right way to proceed. Even better, he should have created something like a committee of people, an uneven number of administrators that would have taken care of it. Just my two cents.
By the way, if you still need up to date Xen rpms, I moved the repo
http://repo.phoenixrpm.com