I started ETC Maryland’s hosting service by building my own platform from the ground up. I spent 5 years in the initial development before going commercial. While Virtualmin has served me incredibly well, nearly 10 years later, I have decided to switch from Linux/Virtualmin to FreeBSD and my own, clean-sheet hosting platform. With the transition to all VPS hosting, this becomes easier to do. The individual pieces I want to use are there; it’s just a matter of tying them all together.
Why the big jump? With any GPL software I use, I am dictated on what I can and cannot do, AND any changes I make to existing software MUST be given back for free. The GPL to me is a gilded cage—it looks nice and seems free, but you are still imprisoned. I am building an entire hosting platform on top of FreeBSD with a total clean sheet so I can, if I wish, sell my hosting platform software to others, or keep it to myself. I do not have the GPL and operating system telling me otherwise.
How am I doing this? I am starting with AI to get the initial development done and to reach the alpha or beta stage. Then, I will bring in a human developer and use both to finalize the project. My priorities are data integrity, individual account isolation, and ease of backups; FreeBSD provides superior tools in all of these regards. While FreeBSD will be the baseline, I am already thinking about a more hardened BSD variant as well.
There is another major architectural change I am making: instead of a control panel running on a bunch of loose scripts, I am building the entire stack as a single compiled executable natively. The advantages of running it this way are huge. First, a single executable runs significantly faster and leaner than a system constantly parsing individual scripts. Second, it locks down security and integrity—you cannot accidentally or maliciously edit a line of code in a binary like you can with a plain text script. It makes the platform incredibly resilient, easier to update, and much harder to break.
Each VPS will get a full FAMP (FreeBSD, Apache, MariaDB, PHP) stack, just like within Virtualmin, but utilizing the unique advantages of the BSD architecture. I am not going to talk about specific features, but everything I can do in Virtualmin will be available in this stack, along with the additional advantages BSD brings to the table. Keep tuned in…