Yikes that looks like a long thread. I’ll give it a read on the plane tomorrow (too busy packing at the moment for a short trip to Charleston, SC).
Of course we would love to host the forums for the Hugin folks.
When I get time I’ll head over and craft a response in that thread to directly address any concerns and make the offer. Who is the main dev on the project at the moment that might be in a position to approach about migration?
Generally, we don’t track anything outside of what default Discourse does and a snippet of Piwik/Matomo analytics. The thing is, we own the entire stack (@darix manages the Discourse install here and @andabata runs the servers for raw.pixls.us + matomo analytics). I do actually have a note to remember to remove the google-hosted font files so I will do that soon.
We pay for the hosting through donations (both money and time/effort). I said it four years ago and it’s still true. No ads, no thank you. I’d rather just continue paying out of pocket indefinitely if I had to (luckily I don’t thanks to the awesome comunity).
I also notice that many folks concerns about these types of communications channels is that they hate using a web interface and prefer to use their mail clients like a traditional mailing list. We can do that too. I can even turn on the ability to start a post in a category directly from an email (I don’t think we have that turned on anywhere yet).
I am of the opinion that it enriches all of us when we can have other Free Software projects and users in close proximity.
Ok, if I haven’t answered in a day or two please someone poke me or mention me in this thread again to make sure I reach out.