
It's time for us to say farewell - based2
http://www.wikispaces.com/
======
filenox
FYI: Wikispaces is a wiki hosting service based in San Francisco, California.
Launched by Tangient LLC in March 2005, Wikispaces was purchased by TSL
Education in March 2014. It competes with PBworks, Wetpaint, Wikia, and Google
Sites (formerly JotSpot). It was among the largest wiki hosts.[Wikipedia]

~~~
jodrellblank
It was a paid-for service, run into the ground with technical debt to the
point where it's an economic write-off? Is someone at TSL Education going to
be sweating about the due diligence they should have done?

~~~
candiodari
Read the article : it was a trade off. Paying the technical debt when
designing the tool would simply have made them fail far faster.

Having this tool, correctly designed, was too expensive and not worth what
people were willing to pay for it. We still had the tool because it was hacked
together.

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ggg9990
My guess: in trying to do GDPR compliance they basically did their first real
code change in years. They found that everything was an undocumented web of
dependencies and that even starting to understand the problem was months or
years of operating profit. At that point they decided to shitcan the whole
thing.

~~~
gerdesj
This is an American (USA) organisation. What on earth has GDPR (an EU thing)
got to do with them?

I note that the do not mention GDPR anywhere on the homepage. This reads to me
like "our business model is no longer viable" or "income is less than
expenditure".

* Over the last twelve months we have been carrying out a complete technical review of the infrastructure and software we use to serve Wikispaces users. As part of the review, it has become apparent that the required investment to bring the infrastructure and code in line with modern standards is very substantial. _

~~~
KeitIG
GDPR is about users, not companies/organizations.

If I’m not mistaken, it applies to all persons in the EU (not « living there
», or « citizen », literally everyone one currently « in » the EU).

So this is totally possible.

~~~
dnomad
This is nonsense. Why spread this nonsense instead of doing a 30-second google
search? Why is there so much pure FUD and nonsense about GDPR on HN?

~~~
closeparen
[https://www2.deloitte.com/nl/nl/pages/risk/articles/gdpr-
top...](https://www2.deloitte.com/nl/nl/pages/risk/articles/gdpr-top-
ten-3-extraterritorial-applicability-of-the-gdpr.html)

Websites offer services to all countries by default; all websites are subject
to GDPR, regardless of where their owners live, unless they do something like
GeoIP restrictions to exclude EU citizens.

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askvictor
GDPR might be a small factor, but that space has changed a lot over the past
13 years. Google giving schools free access to G-Suite, (including sites)
pretty much killed usage of wikispaces in schools that took up Google. Other
online collaborative tools and LMSs have no doubt eaten other parts of their
education market. And facebook has probably eaten a lot of their community
lunch.

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davvolun
The copyright on that page hasn't been updated since 2015.

Color me surprised...

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downandout
I wonder how much GDPR had to do with bringing them down. For a site like
this, blocking EU traffic wouldn't have been a reasonable option, and even for
sites smaller than Wikispaces, GDPR compliance can easily cost 7 figures. The
timing is likely not a coincidence.

~~~
jacquesm
> GDPR compliance can easily cost 7 figures

That's just bullshit. GDPR compliance isn't a thing you can get accredited for
in the first place and besides that any company that (1) respects their users
and their data and (2) has proper security in place is most likely going to
already be mostly compliant before they even start.

If you're into adtech and your hobby is to try to find exactly what is and
isn't legal then yes, it will cost you but for a normal business that acts in
good faith you are looking at much more modest figures than the one you quote.

~~~
downandout
_(1) respects their users and their data and (2) has proper security in place
is most likely going to already be mostly compliant before they even start._

If the law said this, and only this, that would be fine. But that's not what
it says. It's a very complex law subject to unique interpretations in the
courts of 28 unique countries.

 _GDPR compliance isn 't a thing you can get accredited for in the first place
_

Did I say you could get accredited for it? I didn't, but nevertheless, you
have to comply with the law (or block EU traffic, if you don't rely on it),
and doing so can be very expensive.

~~~
gerdesj
_It 's a very complex law subject to unique interpretations in the courts of
28 unique countries._

In the UK, GDPR will replace the current legislation (Data protection Act
1998) [https://www.itgovernance.co.uk/data-
protection](https://www.itgovernance.co.uk/data-protection)

The same will happen across the entire EU.

It's not a very complex law subject (whatever that is) You do need to do some
research and spend some time in consideration but it is not beyond the wit of
man.

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downandout
_The same will happen across the entire EU._

You have been told this by the 27 remaining governments? Great news! /s

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gerdesj
Well you can stick your /s up your bum (what ever that means)

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dang
Please don't do this here.

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ams6110
Sort of a bullshit reason. Too expensive to "bring the infrastructure and code
in line with modern standards." What does that mean? Why is it necessary to do
that at the expense of shutting down the service?

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reificator
Major security or stability bugs resulting in increased operational costs over
time? Ones that are difficult to fix with the current infrastructure and
codebase?

~~~
barrkel
Op-ex exceeds revenue to the point that operating capital is better invested
elsewhere.

Some things possibly adding step changes to the costs can be regulatory (GDPR)
and patching (outdated dependencies having no obvious upgrade paths). The
latter is a killer, especially if it's a platform going away, eg some LTS OS.

