Recently, I went to one my favorite source code repositories, just to check out new submissions, and see how things are progressing in the community. I always enjoy seeing how up and coming young programmers are learning new ways to keep our favorite “old, dead” language alive.
Much to my surprise, I found the site to be inoperable. Thinking that it was a transient problem, I tried again the next day, with the same results. I next tried the usual things, like checking Azure services (PSC was hosted there), domain tools (domain is still registered), as well as some other basic places. Everything seemed fine, except the site wasn’t responding.
After a bit more searching around, I found a post on a popular VB-related website.
From Ian Ippolito, to a member of VBForums:
Hey thanks Richard that's really nice of you to say. Well you will not envy the situation with Planet Source Code. It has been unprofitable for many years so I have been subsidizing it and paying about $500 a month to keep it running. But, recently the extremely old version of Windows server that is running on had an update which removed a now obsolete version of TLS. But the extremely old version of IIS doesn't support the change. I could probably debug it if I could figure out what some of that software is on there but I have lost the documentation years ago. And at this point it would cost way too much to try to get back up (for something that is a money loser anyway). So unfortunately it is shutting down. Sorry about that.
So it seems that the site is no more. Mr. Ippolito has decided the site was not worth the cost. I don’t hold any ill will; quite the contrary. Mr. Ippolito has provided valuable learning tool for many, many people across the globe, for many years. I wish nothing but the best for Mr. Ippolito in his retirement.
I’ve attempted to contact Mr. Ippolito several times, over several different platforms, and have received no responses. My queries were mainly around saving the content for future programmers by hosting the content on my own site, at no cost to him, or to consumers of the content. I still believe the content has learning value, even if it has no monetary value.
Since Mr. Ippolito has not responded to my repeated hails, I can only deduce that he has no further interest in the content of the site.
Way back in the time before time, I purchased the Jumbo CDs, which contain content of PSC. I’ve begun the process of importing the data to fortypoundhead.com, and I am not charging for the content, and you only need to sign up if you want to submit code of your own to the site. As of this writing, around 8,000 entries have been made. Enjoy.
Heck, if it takes off, and if people actually participate, I might even hold monthly contests. I just want to do my part to help the world learn.