Host sharing

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Hostsharing eG

logo
legal form cooperative
founding December 6, 2000
Seat Hamburg
management Michael Hierweck, Martin Weigele
Website www.hostsharing.net

The Hostsharing eG is a cooperative organized German web host . Any person (including legal entities) can become a member. Hostsharing was founded on December 6, 2000 and has dedicated itself to the use and support of Debian GNU / Linux and open source software and offers web hosting on dedicated and shared web servers with particularly high quality requirements. The servers are managed by some of the members of the cooperative themselves. Since a monthly membership fee is levied in addition to the cooperative's share, even a small webspace package for host sharing is no longer part of cheap hosting. Many members of host sharing rent out web space as resellers .

Host sharing is based on the active participation and co-development of the offer by the members. The cooperative has been growing steadily since 2000, in the meantime (as of 2009) the cooperative has grown to around 200 members who jointly host around 5000 domains.

History, founding history and concepts

While in the early days of the Internet, users were also the makers of the Internet, from around the mid-1990s onwards it changed in the direction of increasing commercialization. One consequence was that users and makers diverged. At the end of the 90s, the web hosting market, ie the technical provision of "web space" in Germany, was dominated by a few companies. The technical possibilities of these providers were relatively narrow. At the market leader at the time, there were a number of protracted technical breakdowns which, coupled with a lack of transparency and communication, posed considerable problems at least for the professional users of the provider - up to and including their business operations. Since the problems could not be solved despite the establishment of an interest group, some of those affected decided to do better together.

So the idea of ​​a collaborative web host was born, which should transfer the open source ideas of transparency, co-determination and participation to web hosting. An association was also considered for the realization. The decision was then made in favor of a cooperative, so that the services of these members were commercially unrestricted, e.g. B. through resale, could be used. The members of the cooperative can contribute through their co-determination rights as well as through paid or voluntary commitment.

Hostsharing eG is largely an "ideal" cooperative - in terms of the basic cooperative principles - which offers its services almost exclusively to its members. The only exception is a temporary use on a trial basis before the start of membership.

The Virtual General Assembly

Host sharing wrote legal history because a virtual general assembly was to be used for the first time. On the other hand, there was the existing cooperative law for a long time, which stipulated the physical presence of the members at the general assembly. Article § 43 of the Cooperative Society Act, which was amended in 2006 due to a scientific study on host sharing, among other things, now also allows the possibility of "decisions by members being made in writing or in electronic form". Hostsharing was the first cooperative to include such a formula in its articles of association and to exercise the virtual general assembly of members over the Internet. As a “virtual company” in the form of a cooperative, host sharing also moved into the focus of economic interest.

credentials

  1. ↑ It was de facto circumnavigated through a preliminary vote on a mailing list, from which the physical meeting was only allowed to deviate by postponement at the same time.
  2. ↑ University of Münster, 2004

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