Soapblox Update

by: Chris Bowers

Thu Jan 08, 2009 at 15:30


To continue an almost comic run of bad luck, following my broken arm, Matt's departure from the site, and the Soapblox crash, last night my glasses broke. As it is impossible for me to function without my glasses, in uber-geek fashion, they are now taped together:


I take is as a symbol both of how much of progressive infrastructure is truly run on a shoestring, and of how we continue to press forward no matter what happens.

Together with Paul Preston and several Soapblox-dependent state blogs, BlogPac is finalizing a plan to save, secure, and improve Soapblox over both the short and long-term. For us, Soapblox is simply too big to fail, and we will not allow it to happen. The plan, along with an action alert, will be presented tomorrow. In the meantime, the situation has improved dramatically, as a new press release from Saopblox indicates. We are going to fix this problem, and continue to build a vibrant progressive movement.

For more information on why Soapblox matters, read this diary. For Paul's full press release, check out the extended entry.

Chris Bowers :: Soapblox Update
To all customers, bloggers, and media.

Starting on Tuesday, some of the SoapBlox servers were infiltrated by a currently unknown source for unknown reasons.

SSH access was acquired by the hackers, where they were able to install port scanning scripts on to the machines.  SoapBlox servers were then being used to scan other servers across the Internet, looking for vulnerabilities.

The disruption of service was caused by our ISP disconnecting the affected servers when they became aware of the port scanning.

The attack was limited in scope, effecting 4 separate SoapBlox servers.  While around 25 SoapBlox sites were offline, thousands of people were affected.

Steps are being taken now to identify who did this, and proper legal action will be taken.  If you have any insight on to who perpetrated this attack, please let us know.

At this time, all services are returned to normal.

We have many wonderful people now volunteering to ensure this doesn't happen again. Clean servers are being created, and existing sites will be migrated shortly on to these more secure servers.

Discussions are currently underway on how to best provide the SoapBlox service, continually improve it, and keep it funded in a way that keeps everything running smoothly.  Soon we will be establishing a way for you to help provide whatever you are willing to keep SoapBlox--and a large chunk of the progressive blogosphere--safe, secure and constantly improving.

Please monitor SoapBlox.net for future announcements, and feel free to contact us at soapblox@gmail.com with any ideas or suggestions you might have.  Everything is on the table.

I apologize with all of my heart for the events of the past two days--from the lack of proper communication, to not seeking help that so many of you are willing to give earlier.

We've all invested so much time and effort in the software and communities, and I am nothing but humbled by the outpouring of support being given.  It shows the true strength of the progressive blogosphere, and these events will lead to a stronger, better SoapBlox platform for all.

Paul Preston
President,
SoapBlox Network, Inc.

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Soapblox Update | 12 comments
Could be worse Chris (0.00 / 0)
All of this could have happened at the height of pre-election activity.
Political speech is consequential. (4.00 / 2)
As a bottleneck for the progressive community, Soapblox needs to be seriously up-armored. Through Soapblox, somebody could (and did) monkey-wrench a hundred-plus printing presses all at once.
Good luck (4.00 / 1)
...but in my opinion you guys are creating a much much smaller, less enabled, and less enabling world than would be possible if we were to try and hook into existing open source community-models and/or software (open source community and open source software being closely related but distinctly different tings), which are all going gangbusters at the moment in terms of innovation and involvment (the polito-sphere is not the only place with passionate activist - it has nothing on the dev/opensource community in terms of passion).

Which is also to say:

Soapblox is a Closedblox - it's (very) outdated already, not extensible and nobody is contributing to it and not many every will (because people who are really into that sort of thing are going to want to participate in one of the excellent and successful open source projects already out there, which are all light years ahead of Soapblox). So you'll (within your rights) basically be insisting on existing and maintaining your own little world for no good reason other than you don't realize how closed it is.

Not trying offend anyone or hurt anyone's feeling, I'm just being honest, and I have the experience, perspective, and knowledge to know that what I'm saying is absolutely true. I hope some people have a change of heart, I realize that might not be the case, so good luck either way.  

What are the better (4.00 / 1)
options?

There does seem a natural alliance of sorts between open left and open source ...

[ Parent ]
OpenBlox? (4.00 / 1)
If I'm not mistaken, your concerns are already being addressed by Paul, Chris and the rest of the people working behind the scenes to revive and secure SoapBlox. In one of Paul's updates from yesterday, he wrote:
It also seems like SoapBlox needs to be transformed from a proprietary model to one of open source to help get rid of me alone as the single-point of contact with so much stuff.
So while you may know what you're talking about as far as programming, you're probably worrying about nothing as far as the future of SoapBlox goes. If nothing else, this is only proof of how important non-centralized and non-proprietary models of software development are. Sure, SoapBlox could be better - but I'm with everyone else when I say that there isn't anything else that quite meets the needs of the progressive blogosphere like SoapBlox.  
[ Parent ]
Even if (4.00 / 1)
Even if Soapblox is open-sourced:

1. It's already **drastically** behind the curve, relative to Drupal, WordPress, or Joomla in terms of number of active contributor (Drupal had hundred of people contribute code to last version that went out), features, and innovation.

..which means...

2. Most developers, especially ones that already know of better alternatives (which is pretty much most of them), are not going to contribute and help bring Soapblox to the level of the current open source projects out there or anything approximating it.

3. It's written in java which makes the number of possible contributor a lot, lot, lot less than if it was written in something like PHP (the top three CMS's are all written in PHP, for instance)

In all seriousness if anyone that comes across this thread would like any help at all finding resources (information and/or people, connections) to help investigate the possibility of doing something with an existing open source package let me know and I'll try to be as much help as possible in terms of cutting down the learning curve. I'm busy, but I'm willing to help in whatever way I can for anyone that's serious about checking into thing. caleb.gilbert at gmail (dot) com

[ Parent ]
"How Drupal will save the world" (0.00 / 0)
Cheesy title, but it's a pretty great (and semi-famous) read:

How Drupal will save the world

[ Parent ]
Drupal is great, but not the solution. (0.00 / 0)
Isn't the Big Orange based on a customized branch of SoapBlox?

The SoapBlox failures were apparently server and hosting related on a linux platform, something that could hit any host site. Therefore, the choice of blogging software isn't the important issue.

I've worked with Drupal, Zen and CiviCRM. It is awesome in its extensibility and possibilities.... but, you would never call on Drupal to be a turn key solution for a random blog-meister.

Not to dis Drupal,  popsci.com is a spectacular drupal 5 site. TOD, the oil drum just upgraded to Drupal 6. Like I say, I've worked with Drupal and I can testify that a site almost requires a drupal specialist to keep it going. The overhead is much greater than, WordPress for example, and you can't just contract with a Drupal hosting server. Drupal shines for advocacy groups using CiviCRM (membership) or online newspapers that need and can use various extensions.

We could have a different discussion about whether we want to expand the Blog category to include other cool features, but I would argue that a simple turn-key product optimized just for blogging like Soapblox isn't a bad solution.

[ Parent ]
Reparo! (0.00 / 0)
I just channeled Harry Potter on your glasses


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hey bowers how did you break them? (0.00 / 0)
if you weren't wearing them. well you it was your lucky day after all. don't ask how i would know. chin up buddy.  
Haha... (0.00 / 0)
I rocked that look for 4 months because I couldn't find a new pair of glasses that I liked. Scotch tape and all.
On that note, (0.00 / 0)
don't waste your time going to Costco. I went a week ago and was truly astonished at the sheer number of boxy, rectangular glasses. They've got something on the order of 300 glasses with a virtually identical shape. And NOTHING else.
[ Parent ]
Soapblox Update | 12 comments
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