Bur.st Update

As you may recall from previous news emails, Bur.st Networking Inc. no longer receives sufficient donations to offer its services. Members of the committee have spent over $3000 of their own money since August 2011 to keep the service running, which is not sustainable. As a direct result of this, the Internet Association of Australia Inc. (IAA) kindly offered to take over providing Bur.st's services, and is already hosting our servers at no cost while we work to make this happen. IAA (formerly the Western Australian Internet Association Inc.) was founded in 1995, operates the West Australian Internet Exchange (WAIX), and has full-time technical staff. Some existing Bur.st volunteers are also going to stick around and give IAA a hand keeping things running.

After a transition period which will end on 30th June 2013, IAA will be requiring users to become members of IAA in order to continue to use the Bur.st services. IAA is committed to educating the public on the Internet and offers many services to the Internet community. Your membership means IAA initiatives such as free member public meetings, conferences, arbitration, and increased member services can continue (such as the new offering of Bur.st-like services to members, but it needs your support if the services are to be viable!)

Individual people may obtain IAA Professional membership, which costs $50 per year. For further details on how to sign up to IAA please visit https://www.internet.asn.au/membership/

A big advantage of IAA's taking over is continuity - you won't need to set up your website or email address anywhere else, @bur.st email addresses will continue to work, etc. If there is sufficient demand for Bur.st / IAA hosting in the future, IAA expects to overhaul the service a bit, particularly to make it easier to manage. However, we expect the functionality that most Bur.st users are using to remain intact. (One significant exception: we do not expect IAA to continue to provide shell access.)

If your preference is not to continue these services as offered by IAA, and you would like to explore other alternatives then the below non-exhaustive list of companies may be able to assist:

Final sign off

Further updates will be communicated from IAA in the future. As always, we thank you for your support, albeit small or large, over the many years of Bur.st's existence. And to all those people who have assisted in some way (you know who you are!) - our hats off to you for your dedication to a great not-for-profit organisation.

- Bur.st Executive Committee & Staff