StackStorm Expenses

[arm4b]

StackStorm includes a lot of components that makes it great and complete project. We also take the project quality seriously and happy to see how our community benefit from that and our users appreciate StackStorm's team hard work and dedication. This is maintained by just a few folks during their free time. There is much more than that and project relies on a number of external paid services to function well.

As StackStorm TSC, we aim on relying less on the 3rd party systems for security reasons and reducing the project's bus factor (sponsored resources, someone's CC, etc), as well as reducing the project's costs, minimize the bureaucracy/expense tracking and overall maintenance.

Here is the list of 3rd party paid services StackStorm is still using:

Service	$	Description
AWS	$300/mo	StackStorm Internal infrasturcture, monitoring, logging, dog-fooding, K8s, CI/CD servers, Release Automation, ChatOps, HA blueprints, e2e tests, nightly builds, etc. Relied on FOSS AWS program 2020- 2022 with no FOSS renewal possible per AWS after Jul 2022._ Reduced costs from $1500 to $300/mo, see AWS Cost Reduction project. Now connected to the parent AWS account, sponsored by Encore Tech.
PackageCloud	~$100-300/mo	Hosted apt/yum repositories with stackstorm deb and rpm packages we release. See PackageCloud Repositories. The bill varies depending on usage. Avg: 200GB packages transferred, 150GB storage used. Now based on FOSS partnership with PackageCloud. Announcement.
@stackstorm.com	$84/yr	Shared $6/mo G Suite account used to manage the email forwarders for StackStorm Senior Maintainers for administrative purposes. Powered by G Suite. Filled in advance with 1 year balance. Valid until Nov 2023.
stackstorm.com	$35/mo	Main website hosting with managed Wordpress. Separated from the main AWS infra. Powered by CloudWays. Migrated to free & transparent GH Static pages allowing open source workflow.
forum.stackstorm.com	$50/mo	StackStorm Forum with discussions and user questions. Previously powered by Discourse. Now Archived. Replaced with Github Discussions.
CircleCI	$50/mo	CI/CD used by major stackstorm repositories for deb/rpm packaging builds. Switched to FOSS plan.
Zoom account	$150/yr	Zoom account for the monthly TSC Meetings. Could be +$ extended for additional cloud recordings and storage. Switched to free meet.jit.si
Packet.net	$5/mo	Bare-metal on-demand cloud service, used by Vagrant/OVA/Packer builds. Replaced with GH Actions allowing nested virtualisation
Domain Certificates	$297/yr	3 wildcard SSL certificates, used by stackstorm domains and internal infrastructure. Optimized with CloudFlare free SSL.
OpenVPN license	$270/yr	OpenVPN used to access internal AWS infrastructure. Skipped license renewal to rely on free license with limitations.
SackStorm® Trademark	$1K every 4yrs	https://lfprojects.org/policies/trademark-policy/ maintained by the Linux Foundation.
SurveyMonkey	-	Occasional stackstorm user surveys. [ 1 ] [ 2 ]
Approx per Month	~$28

However needs like maintenance, infrastructure, expenses, development, bug fixes, security research, timely security patches, meetups, developer conferences, marketing to spread out the word and any other initiatives that would make StackStorm successful via new Community Bridge platform which is powered by the Linux Foundation:

https://funding.communitybridge.org/projects/stackstorm

The platform provides enough transparency and trust you need to support the StackStorm as a project and we appreciate any help from our community is it new code or funding contributions.

[Kami]

Re domain certs - we should eventually probably switch to lets encrypt...

Also, will openvpn still be needed once build infra is transitioned to new foss AWS account?

[punkrokk]

FWIW, AWS has pretty affordable, automatable certs. Regarding VPN, we are trying to get a Palo VM license so that we have better VPN and security around the AWS VPC. JP Bourget / @punkrokk

…

On Jun 14, 2020, at 10:47 AM, Tomaz Muraus ***@***.***> wrote:  Re domain certs - we should eventually probably switch to lets encrypt... Also, will openvpn still be needed once build infra is transitioned to new foss AWS account? — You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe.

[punkrokk]

We have AWS below $500, and maybe even below $400.