I have a my only little US$20/mth Wikimedia server, where I post random FPGA projects. Even though it has 1/2 M page views on the two main pages, I am in two minds about closing it.



Why?



* It is a hobby. something I do to fill my spare time, and I want to be free to tinker with other stuff as my moods take me



* I don't have as much free time as i used to (or maybe I don't find as much time as I used to), so the site is getting stale



* I get about an email twice a week with somebody telling me that their world will end if I don't help them with an assignment. I try to help them as much as I can in an 10 minute email exchange, but am never able to commit the needed time unless I am also interested in their problem. Sometimes they get really needy... it hurts to tell somebody "This is not my problem, stop emailing me and go away"



* I've run out of fresh ideas - I've explored all the bits I am interested in, and don't really fancy the idea of embarking on multi-month projects like when I wrote a DisplayPort source from scratch.



* I have a few people offering me contract work, but never offering to pay enough to make me want to dedicate all MY free time to THEIR cause.



* People ask me to debug assignments for them. I don't like it when somebody else's problems becomes my problems. I've got enough problems of my own as it is!



* US$20 a month isn't much, but over a year that $240 less pocket money I have to put towards my hobbies (I'm not going to put ads on it, because I hate hobby websites with ads)



* The nagging worry that one day the site will get hacked. If it got hacked I would just delete the Amazon EC2 instances and call it a day



* You only get a small amount of feedback and encouragement, and end up questioning if it is of any value at all.



It will have to disappear eventually, it won't outlive me for long without somebody paying the bills.... That is something the Internet hasn't had to deal with much, as it has only been mainstream for 20 years or so and constantly reinventing itself. (Well, maybe not - anybody remember Geocities?)



Maybe I should write a book - at least a book in the library has permanence and costs me nothing while it sits there....