forgive me for asking the obvious, but why do the .com and .net not merge onto 1 server to consolidate costs?
It's a fair question to ask actually.
There are historical reasons that led to the current situation.
esc0 registered the domain names with a hosting company when the initial ps3xploit team was formed, he still pays the domains and the .com hosting to them.
When the team literally split up over the HEN leak incident (leaks are like a raging STD coming back again and again lol), I decided to remove myself from the HEN project and to dedicate my time to a long term hacking project in several phases I called the PS3 Toolset, I chose to open the project to public usage and needed hosting for that.
But the hosting services esc0 uses are very expensive for certain things, and as I wanted SSL support, no unsecure communications allowed, and a number of other features including unlimited storage, bandwidth, free SSL certificates supported by the PS3 etc.., I took up a 3 year plan elsewhere and asked esc0 to point the .net domain that he bankrolled from the start but never used to the host I had selected.
esc0 pays his hosting every 3 or 6 months because he never really had funding to organise anything else, for a long time, before HEN came out, he paid everything from his own pocket..
At my end I chose a 3 year plan with another host because it was a lot cheaper and I had no funding, just my own money.
So here we are, years later.
We talked about merging some months ago BUT in order to make such plans we first needed to know whether there was a future for online presence, without donations the Toolset project public access will simply be closed so there would be no need to consider a merge at all.
But fundamentally, I believe it's the right move, and not just for the ps3xploit umbrella but for all community hosting needs. I spoke about this a few weeks ago when the devil303.com service closed down, but as usual, nothing came out of that convo despite the positive comments.
If we could guarantee funding, we could consolidate all community hosting into one unlimited contract and provide access from any domain provided by devs, secure hosting access via ftp to all vetted devs and contributors who need it, etc..
For something like this to happen, the community MUST organise, ensure minimal funds collection, it wouldn't require very much money and we could finally make longer lasting tools, without fearing dead links & the likes.
Again, at the end of the day, all this is in YOUR hands guys, as it should be, there's always a limit to what devs or contributors can do without your support.
You can be certain that at any given time, within the community, and the last 2 decades have proven that, you have a handful of skilled hackers, a few skilled devs, skilled contributors of all sorts, a few people with plenty of cash to burn, a majority of people who could spare a buck or 2 every year, other people with good connections or specific knowledge that could help with various things etc..
All these people fundamentally have the same basic needs, at the end of the day, all our devs, even the best of them who could potentially write everything they need, are just as delighted as regular users to see new homebrew or new hacks getting released.
From there, the problems I see clearly, more than anything else, are the lack of motivation and the lack of support, which really are the 2 sides of the same coin, 2 problems feeding each other in a vicious circle.
If we all pulled our resources together, we could literally make miracles, and I don't think I am overselling it.
