As I have hinted at before, Dan and I have decided that we will move the actual podcast files away from this server. Since we started the show, our bandwith usage has been steadily growing, including a quite dramatic jump around the time we released episode 7. To give you a feel for the numbers, here’s the raw bandwith we pushed since I set up the site:

• August (starting on the 25th): 17.2 MB
• September: 4.27 GB
• October: 65.63 GB
• November (at the time of writing): 21.28 GB

While we can comfortably support the current bandwith on this server, it isn’t hard to forsee that we will outgrow it quite quickly at this pace. I have therefore set up an account with Libsyn to host the media files for the podcast, starting with the next episode which I am in the process of editing right now. We are currently on the “Podcast Standard” plan, which will give us 250 MB of hosting per month with unlimited bandwith for $10 a month. This change will not affect the way you get the show at all. The show notes will still be here on the site along with a Flash player to stream the show directly. The address for the RSS feed will also not change. This stuff happens purely behind the scenes and shouldn’t concern you, the listeners, at all.

Since Dan is already donating time and his hosting space to produce this show and I am paying for Libsyn and also off-site backup for the production files, I will set up a PayPal account especially for Linux Outlaws and put a donation button on the site. I do not expect anyone to donate, but if you do enjoy the show and have one or two bucks to spare, Dan and I would appreciate it very much. I am being purposefully open with our expenses here and I do guarantee that the money we receive from donations will only be spend on the Libsyn fees and further down the road maybe on some hardware that is immediately used to produce the show (like a USB harddisk to back up the audio files in addition to the off-site solution). I hope you will agree that this is a fair arrangement since I really don’t want to put any advertising on the site or the show itself if I don’t absolutely have to.

I am really happy that the number of listeners seem to grow steadily and I think that this step is a very good sign. Outgrowing our cradle like this proves that there is definitely a lot of interest in this kind of show and as long as that holds true, Dan and I are more than happy to continue doing what we do. Please tell your friends and co-workers about the podcast (now that we have the Libsyn setup it’s gotta pay off, after all) and keep writing us encouraging feedback like we are getting on an almost daily basis now.

Over the last few weeks, we have received several emails requesting an Ogg version of the podcast. I knew this would eventually crop up and while I initially did not produce such a version of the show to minimise production time, I am not oblivious to the fact that many people place a lot of importance in making your podcast available in Ogg, especially if it is a show that primarily deals with Free Software. I personally consume 95% of my podcasts on portable players, however, and I’ve yet to meet one person who actually owns a player that supports the Ogg format. I am not saying that such a player doesn’t exist or that I don’t get the ideological reasons behind using Ogg, I am just saying that it is still a very much impractical format for a large majority of people.

Nonetheless, I am willing to consider the publishing the show in that format, even if it means about an hour of additional production time since I not only have to re-encode every episode but I also have to tag that version on its own and create a special Ogg feed for it that I have to publish seperately. I am very much suspecting all this effort won’t warrant the actual number of downloads we will be getting for this version, but I am willing to try. The reason why I am posting this here instead of just doing it, is the fact that I want everyone to understand the work involved in this and also to make sure that it is understood that this will be the only two versions of the show I will be doing — don’t even try to talk me into different bitrates or somesuch.

I don’t know exactly when we will be releasing the first Ogg version of an episode since I am currently looking for dedicated hosting and bandwidth for the podcast files; our listenership has grown so much, that we will soon be forced to move them off this server. I will decide where to host the Ogg files and how to produce them after I know how much the new delivery method will be costing me. You may see a donation button appear on this website soon after. I definitely don’t want to consider any advertising neither on the site nor in the show itself at this point, so if you want to help us along with the fees (I will definitely write a post on the blog telling you exactly how much those amount to once I know myself), just use that button once we put it up.

I really appreciate the fact that so many people seem to enjoy this show and I am happy about every piece of listener email we receive. So far, all of them have been really positive. I hope the people who requested the Ogg version can live with this arrangement. If not, or if you have any other ideas, let me know, OK? Thanks again for listening, I’m having the time of my life doing this!