What I Self Host | slacker news

I deplore this weakening and dilution of the term “self-hosting”. In my opinion, if your services had downtime today, you are not “self-hosting”. If you depend on anything which has “cloud” in its name, you are not “self-hosting”. If you cannot reasonably quickly access your hardware physically, like inserting or replacing an add-on card, you are not “self-hosting”.

EDIT: It’s like saying “I don’t take the bus! I ‘self-drive’ my own car! (By which I mean that I employ an agency to provide a driver to drive a car for me, which I rent!)” or “I self-grow and self-harvest all my own food! By which I mean that I pay a farmer to grow food and harvest it for me.”

Words have meaning.

(Further: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21240357>)

But are you really self hosting if you don't build your server silicon from first principles :)

I think in your analogy a VPS is more like renting a (normal) car rather than buying one - you're still in control over where it goes and its up to you to obey the traffic laws but if there are any major issues that are not your fault it's up to the rental company to make sure you get a replacement.

I'm curious what your goal is with your language crusade? Being precise with your language can be important when the distinction matters, but does it really matter here?

> If you depend on anything which has “cloud” in its name, you are not “self-hosting”.

What if it didn't have cloud in its name when I signed up but some marketing bozo adjusted the description since then? Did it stop being self hosting even though nothing technical about the setup changed.