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The MassLinux Disappearance Explained
Just recently we had a piece commenting on how many people were wondering where MassLinux had gone. Emmett Plant, at LinuxToday, has got the story. In an interview, Emmett talks with MassLinux' Todd Lauder about the whole situation and how people can expect to get their information back from MassLinux.
3 payments were sent to the ISP, they were all cashed, they called us up asking for 3 payments. We didn't have the cash to send them, the never told us they were going to shut off the line, they said they were looking into the billing problem, then they cut us off....
Sorry, but giving people the benefit of the doubt is not allowed here at Slashdot. You must instantly assume the worst about their motives, and attack them until they beg for mercy in a press release.
Oh wait, it's a Linux company. Nevermind. :)
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Does anyone have any information on who they were using for upstream? I could not conceive of any reputable provider simply pulling the plug without warning. Especially if there were known billing billing problems...
The other thing that I really don't get:
There's only 2 things I can think of here:
1. Fraud. In which case it should be very easy to determine from whomever signed the checks, where they were going, and how they were able to get ahold of the checks in the first place.
2. A screwup on the part of the bank, where deposited monies were going to the wrong account. However, as they were getting deposited, the ISP would never have record of checks bouncing, and I'm assuming that before filling out deposit slips that they recording receiving payments from masslinux in their billing system. In which case this could have gone on for a crazy amount of time without them ever knowing.
Something is weird about this whole situation. And assuming that everything MassLinux reported to LinuxToday is accurate, there is one seriously shady ISP out there. -- Andrew Auderieth President Datarealm Internet Services
I must admit, there's something about the tenor of the explanation that indicates that this ship was bound to sink eventually anyway.
I do stringer work for a tiny web hoster too. It's not really good money, for him or me. I basically get my site hosted for free plus some sweat equity "if it ever takes off" in return for doing the guy's virtual Apache admin stuff. Now he's mostly doing design & marketting. He never gets paid, and if everyone paid him on time he might eke out a slim margin. And if he makes one mistake, it could mean not being able to pay his upline at all this month.
My point is, I don't blame MassLinux but the bottom line is that someone made a mistake. Hey, mistakes happen. It's just not very conducive to profit in the slim world of hosting.
-- "In order to have power, I must be taken seriously." -Mojo Jojo
trust me, we would love to come back, we tried to get funding from everywhere we could think of, and my pockets ain't that deep :/ If anyone has any ideas on funding or colo's let me know.....
If you do an ARIN whois on one of MassLinux's nameservers (NS.SUNDOWNIS.COM -- Sundown IS is one of their sister companies -- 63.66.103.5) you'll find it in a particular company's CIDR block....
:)
Let's just say it appears their problems begin and end with U.
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
MOO;IANAL.
There used to be a picture linked here.
Okay, stuff happens.
The problem is that no one bothered to contact the customers.
They had access to the computers, so they had access to e-mail addresses. They could have checked whois (or their own records) for phone numbers. They could have sent out snail-mail letters, if necessary. What's the cost of a few stamps compared to going out of business?
The big problem I faced was that I didn't know what happened. For the first few days, I had to sit there and wonder if I should move my domain or not.
Had I received an e-mail, a phone call, a letter, or even spotted a message in a newsgroup (I searched!) explaining what was up, I probably would have gotten someone to host a temporary page saying "technical difficulties" or something, gotten my domain pointed at it, and waited it out.
In fact, I got a couple of offers (based on my posts here and in newsgroups) to host my entire site for free, and in reality, I could have set something up at home on my DSL connection.
But I didn't know.
So, I assumed the worst and set up my sites with a new ISP. With no news, no contact, I had to assume they had taken the money and run.
Meanwhile, with the outage going on, day by day by day, more and more of my users were slipping away from me. I don't know if I will bother continuing, because of the same reasons MassLinux offered.
Luckily for me, this is not what pays my mortgage, so I will survive. I feel for those for whom this is not the case.
As to lawsuits, yeah, I was definitely planning something to at least get back what I had paid them, possibly something more for all the time I had to devote to setting up and reconfiguring my sites elsewhere. (I've still got a couple that aren't set up quite right yet.)
Stupid people will be persecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law.
I see alot of people asking why they didn't get emails from us explaining the outage, the short answer, we didn't have connectivity, I only rescently got a cable modem installed, and that was after all the articles.
A billing problem and circuit disconnection shouldn't take down a whole business. In a business you have to do whatever it takes. If they would have scrambled and communicated with customers anyway they could, they probably would have retained 90 % of their clients, IMHO. The billing issue would have been resolved eventually.
This is a case of Darwin's Law at work in business. If this wouldn't have happened, something else would have taken it down eventually. Someone gave up too soon.
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
I am not a Masslinux customer, but if I were, this is what I would do:
1) If I were a resident of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I would contact the Department of Telecommunication and Energy. Calling them on the phone at (800) 392-6066, their complaint line, is probably the best approach. My question would be whether they are the correct place to launch an investigation at the state level.
2) I would call my (Massachusetts) assemblyman and ask for assistance. This will probably require a letter sent by US Mail documenting the loss of service and the lack of business-to-customer communication.
3) Regardless of where I lived and worked, I would contact the Federal Communications Commission and ask which federal agency ought to be involved in an investigation. I would go to the Federal Government because they have some jurisdiction over anyone participating in interstate commerce.
No one should accept heresay and innuendo. These people represented themselves as a business and they took payment from customers for services. Masslinux customers have a right to a complete and thorough explanation, including a determination of ultimate responsibility for the disruption.
Anyone who accepts less because there is no recourse in the "New Ecomomy" doesn't understand their rights as American citizens.
I wish I didn't feel this way, but part of me thinks that the community should stop meaningless political actions like boycotting Amazon.com and start using its passion and determination to get to the bottom of this incredible situation.
--
Dave Aiello
-- Dave Aiello